I had a letter today from the Respondents demanding £800 by Monday for the bundle cost. The Employment Judge agreed to my request there be a £500 cap on the cost, although it is not in the Order from the Preliminary Hearing. I believe the Respondent has deliberately made it as expensive as possible. The are a quasi-legal firm and produce hundreds of bundles every year in the normal course of work. They have a photocopier machine contract which makes the cost a fraction of a pound for each copy, plus teams of administrators who routinely collate them. They have already turned up on my door extorting £2,000. This was from a costs order at the EAT from a previous case where the panel said I did not have to pay it until I could afford it. I paid it as they threatened to bankrupt me. They are saying they will apply to have my hearing struck out if not paid by Monday. What should I do?

Hello All - Ist time post. In seeking further disclosures from the Respondent prior to ET, is the correspondence to and from them able to be discussed at the ET hearing?

Good evening fellow CAGgers, I have the following problem. I have a pending Employment Tribunal hearing in some 1.5 months and now it is a disclosure phase. The Respondent tries whatever they can in their powers (via a representative) to delay the disclosure. They gave me estimate for delivering the requested documents which was far beyond the date the ET Judge set for agreeing on the bundle. Also, I cannot be sure that they will give me all the docs I requested, they are saying they will first establish the relevance of those to the case. What can I do to force them to disclose the documents quicker? Otherwise I may lose valuable preparation time and it will delay the preparation of my witness statement. Shall I go and apply for a disclosure order directly? many thanks.

Hi all, I have a full 10 day hearing coming up for discrimination, whistle-blowing, victimization, harassment & constructive dismissal. The respondents asked me to forward a figure that i would settle for. I did this and now i have received a nasty letter from them. The respondents response is that they will only explore settlement if i drop the whistle-blowing element of the claim. This is odd as they asked me to give them a figure and now they are saying they will not explore settlement until i drop the whistle-blowing element. The respondents are the big public sector employer that has been in the press about using gagging orders in settlement agreements. I wonder if this is their new way of shutting up whistle-blowers a bit of black mail i.e drop the whisle-blowing and we might settle. Any views on the above, is this just normal game playing now that hearing isn't too far away?

Disability discrimination claim. The Respondent is producing the bundle. I have sent them my index of documents with each document very efficiently named and dated for clarity, relevancy and easy navigation. The Respondent completely renamed all of my documents within the index to make themselves sound good and to make my documents difficult to find seem extremely confusing, sound irrelevant and also to contain repetitive document names for less clarity and greater confusion. Some of the names of documents they’ve renamed do not reflect the contents of the documents in any way whatsoever and even I can’t navigate between the documents due to misleading names in the index – it will be even worse for the judge who will not be as familiar with my documents as I am. The Respondent also changed some of the dates, merged separate unrelated documents to reduce impact and deliberately put them in an incorrect order, which does not accurately reflect events. For instance, if I quickly need to find my x-ray taken at A&E I would not be able to do so with the way they altered the bundle as the Respondent merged my x-ray with a different document and this particular x-ray is not even listed on the Index of documents. This is wrong. You would really have to hop around the bundle. Most important documents have been put to the back of the bundle, some have been removed. The Respondent went out of their way to make it impossible to get to my documents while left their own very well named and easy to navigate between. The Respondent even renamed documents to make themselves look good and the Claimant look bad. They even changed words like “Medicines” to “Drugs”. The Respondent totally skewed it. Is the Respondent allowed to rename the documents listed in the Index of Documents I submitted and make such changes for deliberate misrepresentation? Also, is the Respondent allowed to remove documents? The Respondent has missed the deadline for the bundle by several weeks now, added additional documents as to what was on their list of documents and also presented the bundle to me (Claimant) by email (in digital form). Can they do this? – The order says it has to be binded. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Best regards x

Hi people! Just a quick bit of advice needed please, as I have found myself out of my depth... I worked for Company A which is owned by Company B, though the nature of meant I worked for company B whilst my contract was with company A. Apologies for how confusing this may seem! I initiated an ET claim against Company B, as the employees which carried out the discriminatory acts were employed by Company B. Company B is essentially the head office, but Company A is the subsidiary company, wholly owned by B but based offshore. So having filed an ET1 with a complaint against Company B, with the correct name and address etc, on day 28 I have received a response from their solicitor stating "the respondent in this matter is actually Company A, not Company B" and requesting a Pre-trial Hearing. Apparently I have 7 days to object to the application for a pre-trial hearing. This is the bit I am hopeful someone will be able to advise me... My position is this; I made a claim against Company B and with good reason. Company A has responded and resisted the claim and asked for a Pre-Trial Hearing. But Company B still hasn't responded at all. Would it be wrong of me to respond to the ET stating that I object to the Pre-Trial Hearing as the request for it wasn't made by the actual respondent in this matter? Pushing my neck out a bit further would it then be wrong of me to ask the ET to consider a judgement in default as the respondent in this matter hasn't answer within the 28 days? Essentially the respondent hasn't answered at all. All I have is a solicitors letter stating that the respondent in this matter is actually an entirely different company, so as far as I am concerned the respondent (an entirely different company) has failed to respond. Just for clarity, the respondent named in the ET1 form is a company in every sense of the word. 2000 staff, office in central London etc. The name and address was correct and I can prove that I did in fact actually work for this company. Is it normal for someone to name a respondent then get a solicitor stating that I am wrong and the respondent is an entirely different company? Surely its up to me to chose who to claim against and the respondent named in the ET1 should reply within time and with a defence or face being found out of time and having a judgement entered in default??? Just when I thought I was starting to understand ET's and their processes this goes and happens! Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated!!!