When a 600-page bundle breach is “hard-fought litigation” and a disabled claimant’s email volume is “scandalous conduct”
The House That Symmetry Forgot
There are two kinds of “conduct” in my case.
On one side you have a represented respondent – Cepac – with a boutique law firm, Horsfield Menzies, and a KC in the wings. They breach orders, misdescribe my litigation history, ring my GP without consent, push costs threats at a disabled litigant in person, and time ambushes for the eve of hearings.
On the other side you have me – a PIP and LCWRA claimant with long-standing anxiety and depression, ambulance call-outs on file, police Vulnerable Person Reports logged, GP letters explaining emotional dysregulation arising from disability.
Guess which conduct the Employment Tribunal has chosen to stage a public preliminary hearing around.
Here’s a clue. It is not the law firm’s.
Two Rule Breaches, One Target
Start with the basics.
An earlier order limited the scope of the bundle to the 29 January 2025 incident. In English, that means: focus the paperwork on the thing the case is actually about.
Cepac’s team responded with a 600-plus page bundle, sprawling well beyond the ordered scope. They are experienced employment lawyers. They know exactly what “limited to” means. They ignored it.
There is no strike-out application against them for that. No public hearing to examine why a represented party thought a case-management order was optional. No solemn letter about “scandalous” over-disclosure.
Me? I sent too many emails.
Emails driven by panic, confusion and feeling deliberately stonewalled on adjustments and applications. Emails my GP and welfare decisions already flag as disability-coloured behaviour. Emails that took a fraction of the time it took to read a 600-page bundle.
Guess whose “rule breach” was fast-tracked to a public conduct hearing in April, with strike-out and costs on the table.
It is not the party with the office scanner. It was not the party with disability mitigation.
The GP, The Costs Threats, And The “Overplaying” Line
Then there is what Horsfield Menzies actually did with my disability.
They knew – in writing – that I have severe anxiety and depression, that stress wrecks my emotional regulation, and that I was facing all of this alone as a litigant in person.
Their moves anyway:
- Early five-figure costs threats waved around like a cricket bat at a one-man team on benefits.
- Repeated pushes for public hearings once they knew how badly that would spike my anxiety.
- Late, tactical submissions landing just before preliminary hearings – not to progress, but to destabilise.
- A phone call to my GP surgery, without my consent, leaning on the medical flank to try and discredit how long it would take me to get appointments.
- Language that basically accused me of overplaying my disability while they quietly exploited it.
Newcastle Employment Tribunal’s reaction to that chain of behaviour?
Nothing on the face of any order. No case-management PH on respondent conduct. No warning letter. No hint that phoning a claimant’s GP off the back of their own filed medical records might be seen as over-stepping.
Instead, the spotlight is pointed squarely at my reactions – the very reactions those tactics were designed to produce.
How To Turn Disability Into Misconduct
The trick, once you have seen it, is simple.
- Push a disabled claimant into short-notice hearings and procedural chaos.
- Ignore or water down adjustment requests.
- Allow the represented side to bombard, ambush and threaten costs.
- Wait for the predictable dysregulation.
- Print out the worst-phrased emails and one bad remark and call it “scandalous conduct”.
- Ask for a public preliminary hearing to strike the claim out and grab some costs.
That is what April is currently listed for: a public conduct trial of a disabled man, while the conduct that lit the fuse is framed as background noise the Tribunal “has no power to determine”.
When I applied under Rule 31 for specific disclosure – trying to unredact Michael Page’s DSAR so I can see what the recruitment agent was saying about me in its internal “Discrimination” email chain – Acting Regional Employment Judge Davies refused it.
His reason? The documents were “not relevant” to the preliminary hearing because that hearing is about my conduct.
So the logic runs like this:
- The way Page and Cepac handled my complaint and my disability – including the redactions that triggered half this mess – is not relevant.
- The way I reacted to that handling is so important it deserves its own public, quasi-disciplinary event.
Disability as context? No.
Disability as content? No.
Disability as evidence? Not really.
Disability as a stick? Absolutely.
Fuck that.
The DSAR That Was “Not Relevant”
Let’s talk about that DSAR.
The unredacted slivers we have already seen are not “admin headers”. They are a window into mindset.
- “Don’t freak out.”
- “Looks like this candidate may be one that does this regularly.”
- “I have googled him and his previous company and it looks like he went through an employment tribunal.”
- Internal chat about keeping Cepac as “sole respondent” until they can’t.
That is PageGroup’s instinctive reaction to a disability discrimination complaint: Google, label, manage the “risk”, and try to keep the client clean.
There is a straight line from that mindset to my distress.
There is a straight line from heavy redactions over those emails to my email volume and tone.
There is a straight line from that sense of being profiled and concealed against to my emotional deterioration.
The Tribunal’s response?
Those documents are “not relevant” to the conduct hearing.
As if a disabled claimant’s mental state just appears in a vacuum. As if what was being done to me by respondents and the system plays no part in how I behaved within it. If I hadn’t had a previous tribunal hearing, would they have reason to “freak out”? Can we deduce that?
Administrative ‘Errors’ That Always Lean One Way
Then we have the admin side. The bit HMCTS likes to pretend is neutral.
- My Rule 29 application to add Page sat in limbo for months.
- It only finally got traction when raised by the respondent’s solicitor at the September PH.
- Case Management Orders were emailed from Leeds ET with a line saying further correspondence should go to Leeds.
- I followed that instruction, sent focused applications and adjustment requests there.
- Newcastle stayed unaware until Butler emailed them on 25 November chasing service on Page.
- Newcastle moved within the day for him.
- When I complained, I got the usual triple-step: sorry for the admin error, nothing was de-prioritised, everything is fine.
When solicitors email, things happen.
When a disabled LiP emails, things vanish into an inbox that allegedly never saw them.
And when the dust settles, I am told the administrative mess has no bearing on fairness, no bearing on conduct, and no bearing on whether I should be paraded in public as the problem.
Why I Stopped Pretending This Is Neutral
So yes – I snapped.
I have filed HMCTS complaints. I have involved my MP. I have written, in plain language, that I no longer trust Newcastle ET to police itself when it comes to differential treatment of represented parties and disabled litigants in person.
And I have stopped twisting myself into knots to sound deferential so as not to upset people who have shown me, repeatedly, that they are not neutral in practice.
If the Tribunal wants to hold a public hearing where the only question is whether my disability-driven conduct is so bad my claim should be struck out, then I will spend the next four months making sure the public record shows the conduct they refuse to examine:
- A 600-page bundle thrown at an order that said “limit the scope”.
- A GP called behind my back – admitted in tribunal filings – in attempt to discredit how long I said the lead time for an appointment was. Equally bizarre as invasive (and his “findings” a clear lie)
- A false “serial litigant” picture pushed and never corrected, including a case that just happened to be another L Thompson of no relation.
- Pre-hearing ambushes.
- Costs threats and public-hearing posturing against a disabled man on benefits. Public hearings only requested after learning of anxiety disorder.
- Administrative “errors” that always seem to lean away from accountability for the represented side.
If they want to call that “robust litigation”, they can do it under their own letterhead.
Knife Edge
Newcastle ET can carry on pretending this is just about a claimant who used the wrong tone.
Cepac and Page can carry on pretending this is a “low value” case with no wider implications.
Horsfield Menzies can carry on selling “people focused law” while driving a disabled claimant into the ground and carrying his reactions into court as trophies.
But there is a cost to picking that story and sticking with it.
You can strike me out in a room.
Or you can explain, in public and forever, why only one side’s conduct ever seems to matter.
Pick one.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
Evidence? Who cares about evidence!? Just blame the disabled lad.