Facts

Mr Levy was admitted as a solicitor in 1985 and specialised in commercial property. In 2018, he was made redundant. He was 57.

He applied for a role at McHale Legal Ltd. On 26 February 2018, McHale Legal Ltd had advertised for a commercial property solicitor with 5+ PQE. Also mentioned in the advertisement was a requirement to have knowledge of all aspects of real estate transactions.  

On 7 March 2018, Mr Levy was interviewed by Ms Udalova-Surkova, a senior solicitor in the commercial property team. During the interview, Ms Udalova-Surkova explained that the firm was looking for two property solicitors and reference was made to Mr Burke, a solicitor who dealt with residential property work. There was no discussion about Mr Levy’s experience in residential property work.

There was discussion around the potential salary and reference was made to the senior associate’s salary being £42,000. Mr Levy said that he would ask for a salary of £50,000 for the first 3 months and offered to be employed on a self-employed consultancy basis. Ms Udalova-Surkova explained that the decision was subject to a “board meeting” which was scheduled for the following day.

After the board meeting, Mr McHale (the senior partner) confirmed via email on 9 March 2018 that he did not want to hire Mr Levy.  Subsequently, on 12 March, Ms Udalova-Surkova emailed Mr Levy to inform him that he had not been successful with the job application. A number of reasons were given for the decision, and she informed Mr Levy that it had been decided at the board meeting to instead offer a role to a 3-5 PQE solicitor.

Mr Levy felt that the decision to not offer him the role, and instead offer a role to someone with a lower PQE, was either direct or indirect age discrimination. McHale Legal Ltd denied that the decision was as a result of age discrimination and claimed that the decision was instead financial. McHale Legal Ltd denied that age and seniority were interchangeable which Mr Levy had alleged.

Decision

The Employment Tribunal upheld Mr Levy’s direct age discrimination claim. The Employment Tribunal concluded that McHale Legal Ltd did not offer Mr Levy the role of a commercial property solicitor because of his age.

The Employment Tribunal found that Mr Levy would have been a suitable replacement for the experienced senior associate. Despite the redistribution of the property work within the firm, the Employment Tribunal’s view was that the position advertised by McHale Legal Ltd was still open and the need for assistance with commercial property work had not disappeared. In addition, the Tribunal concluded that the emails exchange between Mr McHale and Ms Udalova-Surkova on 9 March 2018, showed that the decision was to not hire Mr Levy personally, rather than not to hire anybody or to deal with the job vacancy in some other way.

Having found that the direct discrimination claim succeeded, it was not necessary for the Tribunal to consider indirect discrimination. 

The judgment is available here.

Mr Raymond Levy v McHale Legal Ltd, Case Number 2413801/2018, 22 May 2019