The Judge Who Didn’t Read The Case
Newcastle Employment Tribunal managed an impressive trick this week.
On 10 March 2026, a duty judge reviewed my case file — claim 6019060/2024 — and decided the real problem with the litigation was me.
The file, the judge said, had grown to 1,941 pages. The situation was described as disproportionate. The blame was placed squarely on my shoulders.
There is just one small complication.
Almost everything said in that email about the case is factually wrong.
And when a court starts assigning blame in a discrimination case without even correctly understanding what the case is about, the embarrassment does not belong to the claimant.
It belongs to the tribunal.
The Case The Tribunal Somehow Invented
The judge’s summary of the dispute was blunt.
According to the email, this was essentially a simple complaint about not getting a job after applying for one.
That is not the claim.
The claim concerns disability discrimination during a recruitment process, specifically what happened after the employer learned about my disability.
That difference matters.
One is disappointment.
The other is a statutory discrimination claim under the Equality Act 2010.
When a tribunal opens a conduct critique by misdescribing the claim itself, the obvious question becomes unavoidable:
How closely was the file actually read before blame was assigned?
The 1,941 Page Mystery
The judge’s email repeatedly referred to the case file now containing 1,941 pages.
This was presented as evidence of unreasonable behaviour.
But that number does not exist in a vacuum.
Large parts of the file consist of material submitted by the respondent, including:
- a bundle exceeding 600 pages (deliberately out of scope ordered by Tribunal)
- extensive submissions outside the ordered scope of the preliminary issue
- large document dumps shortly before hearings
- duplicated documents created when agreement on the bundle collapsed
The tribunal itself had ordered that the relevant preliminary issue should focus on the January events.
Despite that, a bundle exceeding 600 pages appeared.
When attempts to resolve the bundle contents failed due to the Respondent deliberately ignoring, I produced my own bundle to ensure key documents were actually before the tribunal. So 600 pages of forced content by me. Guilty.
This is not unusual litigation behaviour. It is what happens when parties cannot agree on the record.
Yet the tribunal’s criticism treated the entire volume as though it had appeared spontaneously from one direction.
The Bundle That Should Never Have Existed
One of the more remarkable episodes in this case involved a 150-page bundle served shortly before a preliminary hearing.
The bundle had not been ordered.
It arrived only days before the hearing.
For a litigant with anxiety disorder who must read, understand and respond to material before appearing in a hearing, this kind of last-minute document dump has predictable consequences.
It makes meaningful participation almost impossible.
Yet when the issue was raised, the tribunal showed little interest in controlling it.
The same tribunal is now complaining about the volume of paperwork that resulted.
The Case With No Issues
The tribunal’s own correspondence acknowledges another striking fact.
The claim was issued in 2024.
And no list of issues has yet been agreed.
In discrimination litigation, the list of issues is the map of the case. It defines:
- what the tribunal must decide
- what evidence is relevant
- what disclosure should occur
Without that framework, litigation drifts into procedural disputes rather than narrowing onto the core allegation.
Complaining that a case has become unwieldy while the issues themselves remain undefined is a procedural paradox.
The Disability Context That Vanished
The tribunal’s email contained detailed criticism of my behaviour.
What it did not contain was a single acknowledgement of the disability context already documented on the file.
The tribunal has medical evidence confirming:
- depression
- anxiety disorder
- emotional dysregulation
- vulnerability markers
The case itself is a disability discrimination claim.
Yet when the tribunal delivered a rebuke about conduct, the disability context disappeared entirely.
For a jurisdiction that routinely adjudicates disability discrimination cases, that omission is not a small detail.
The Hearing That Isn’t About Discrimination
Instead of clarifying the discrimination allegation itself, the next step listed in the case is a conduct-focused preliminary hearing.
Which leaves a curious procedural picture.
The tribunal has not yet defined the issues in the discrimination claim.
But it has found time to criticise the conduct of the person bringing it.
When The Court Complains About Its Own Process
Tribunals are not spectators in litigation.
They control the process.
They decide:
- what issues are relevant
- what documents are necessary
- how bundles are prepared
- how disclosure proceeds
If the procedural machinery fails, the tribunal cannot simply step back and blame the litigant trying to navigate it without legal representation.
Especially when that litigant is disabled.
The Email That Started This
The correspondence that triggered this article came from Employment Judge T.R. Smith, acting as duty judge, and was sent by Newcastle Employment Tribunal administration on 10 March 2026.
It criticised the scale of the case file.
It attributed responsibility primarily to me.
And it described the case in terms that do not match the actual claim.
If courts want respect for their authority, the starting point is accuracy.
The Receipts
Everything described above sits on the tribunal record.
Duty Judge Correspondence – 10 March 2026n – Email issued by Newcastle Employment Tribunal citing the file size of approximately 1,941 pages and criticising my conduct.
Respondent Bundle – A document bundle exceeding 600 pages, despite the tribunal’s order that the relevant issue concerned January events.
Unsolicited Respondent Bundle – A 150-page bundle served shortly before a preliminary hearing without prior tribunal order.
Duplicate Bundle Creation – A separate claimant bundle produced after disputes about whether key documents would appear in the respondent bundle.
Medical Evidence On File – Documentation confirming depression, anxiety disorder, emotional regulation difficulties and vulnerability markers.
HMCTS Complaint Escalation – A Stage 3 complaint regarding tribunal administration and communication is currently active.
Parliamentary Correspondence – Concerns have been raised with Alan Strickland MP and Sir Stephen Timms MP regarding disability-insensitive communication from the tribunal.
Newcastle Employment Tribunal has suggested this case became unwieldy because of the claimant.
But when the tribunal itself misidentifies the claim, ignores the disability context, and attributes blame for documents largely submitted by the respondent, the more obvious explanation is simpler.
The tribunal did not read the case carefully enough before deciding whose fault everything was.
And that, for a court, is the real embarrassment.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project