A serial litigant was rejected from an assessment centre due to his “abrasive” attitude and not because of his age. He was ordered to pay the employer’s full legal costs.
Facts
Mr Taheri applied for a job at Westway Nissan, which ran assessment centres to evaluate their candidates. He was invited to attend. At the assessment centre, organised by Mr Kingswood, there was to be a presentation followed by a group exercise.
Before the presentation, Mr Taheri spoke to Mr Kingswood in a rude, abrupt and confrontational manner, then interrupted him several times during the presentation. During the group exercise, Mr Taheri was confrontational and dismissive of the other candidates. Following this, he was told to leave. He said words to the effect of: “You think I am too strong – I’ve been to this type of event before and I am not what you are looking for – you only want sheep.”
A few hours after Mr Taheri was sent home, he contacted Mr Kingswood via text stating: “Nigel, please pay me £100 for my time or else I will have no option to contract Acas. Kind regards. David Taheri.” Two weeks later, Mr Taheri contacted Acas which sent an email on to Westway Nissan informing it of his complaint. Mr Kingswood then forwarded the text to the Acas conciliator claiming it was a clear attempt to “blackmail myself into giving him £100”.
Acas informed Mr Taheri that there were going to be no offers to resolve the claim, after which he called Mr Kingswood and asked for £20,000 or he would “come after Mr Kingswood for that sum”. Mr Taheri then presented an Employment Tribunal (ET) claim asserting age and disability discrimination, seeking “at least £25,000” in compensation.
Mr Kingswood lodged a police report stating that Mr Taheri was trying to blackmail him. The report was logged but nothing further happened.
Other background
Mr Taheri had previously presented a very similar ET claim, in which he was unsuccessful at an assessment centre and alleged that the company had discriminated against him because of his age and his race. The ET judge in the present case noted that there was “a marked similarity between the events which gave rise to that case and the events in this case.”
In the earlier case, the ET rejected Mr Taheri’s claims and deemed his complaint of race discrimination to be vexatious. As such, he was ordered to pay costs of £1,000.
Decision
Liability
The ET in the present case found that there were clear reasons for sending Mr Taheri away from the assessment centre, and there was no evidence to suggest that any of these reasons were to do with his age or his disability. Had Mr Taheri been a different age and/or without a disability, Westway Nissan would have acted in the same way. The reason he was sent home from the assessment centre was because of his abrasive behaviour.
Costs
Having considered Mr Taheri’s history of previous ET claims, the ET ordered that she should be “liable for the whole of the legal costs incurred by [Westway Nissan] since 8 February 2019”. This date was selected as it was when the company had made it clear that “no payment would be made to him in connection with these proceedings”. The exact costs that Mr Taheri would have to pay were left to be determined later, following Westway Nissan’s submission of legal costs to the court.
The judgment is available here.
Taheri v Aprite (GB) Ltd t/a Westway Nissan: 2411529/2018