Wendy Miller KC arrived in Cepac’s case like I was low-hanging fruit. Same disabled claimant. Same disability spine. Same pressure points. Familiar litigation history from Cummins sitting in the background like a loaded prop. Then I raised the obvious concern about dual involvement, took it to the BSB, and suddenly her professional independence needed a parachute. But even on the way out, she managed to leave Cepac a nasty little letter blaming me. Very silk. Very brave. Very convenient.
The Silk Meets The Banana Skin
Wendy Miller KC was meant to be the grown-up in the room.
A silk. Serious. Trained. Polished. The sort of barrister whose chambers profile probably smells faintly of oak furniture, invoice uplift and somebody whispering “complex litigation” over a crystal tumbler.
And yes, let us be fair. In a couple of arenas, she is obviously trained. She knows procedure. She knows how to dress an exit in professional language. She knows how to make a withdrawal sound like a moral injury caused by the disabled man on the other side.
But outside that little courtroom greenhouse, by most metrics, I am lapping her.
Reach. Search. Public record. Persistence. Narrative. Receipts. The bit where people can actually read what happened instead of swallowing a tidy little barrister letter like communion wine.
That, I suspect, was not in the plan.
The Dual-Involvement Problem
My objection was not random.
It was not “I dislike the barrister”. It was not “anyone who represents Cepac must be evil”. Although, to be fair, some of them do seem committed to the aesthetic.
The concern was specific.
Miller had already appeared against me in the Cummins litigation. Then she appeared again for Cepac, against the same disabled claimant, with the same disability spine, overlapping medical context, and a litigation history she was already familiar with.
That is not a fever dream. That is a professional-context issue.
I raised it with the Tribunal. I raised it with the Bar Standards Board. As far as I am aware, that BSB route remains live.
So when she later withdrew, the obvious question was not simply:
“What did Lee say online?”
The obvious question was:
“What professional problem had become too awkward to ignore?”.
The Ethics Line Shuffle
As I understand the position being presented, Miller’s withdrawal was dressed around professional independence and the BSB ethics line.
Fine. Then show the shape of it.
What exactly was asked?
What exactly was said?
Was the dual-involvement concern explained?
Was my BSB route disclosed?
Was the same-disabled-claimant context put fairly?
Or maybe the ethics-line reference was doing something else.
Maybe it was not the clean regulatory shield it was made to look like. Maybe it was just another piece of framing, dropped into the letter because it sounded official, tidy and useful.
Because right now, the ethics-line point does a lot of work while proving very little.
It makes the withdrawal sound responsible. It makes the timing sound professional. It gives the letter a regulatory aftershave. But it does not prove that the full context was put to anyone. It does not prove what was asked. It does not prove what was answered. And it certainly does not prove that the real problem was me, rather than the professional discomfort I had already raised.
That is the issue.
If the ethics line was central, the fair question is obvious: what was the actual advice, and what facts was it based on?
A Modest Proposal For Next Time
There is, of course, a practical solution here.
Before accepting another brief against the same disabled litigant, across related proceedings, with overlapping disability context and prior litigation history already sitting in the room like a bad smell in silk, perhaps counsel could consult the BSB before taking the case.
Radical, I know.
Ask first.
Check first.
Think first.
Invoice later.
Because the alternative is what happened here.
Accept the brief. Sit in the case. Let the concern grow. Then, when the professional position becomes uncomfortable, reach for the ethics line, withdraw, and leave behind a letter that somehow makes the disabled claimant the problem.
That is not foresight. That is mopping up after the horse has bolted, trampled the claimant, billed six-minute units, and asked chambers for a glass of water.
And the sympathy.
The empathy.
The obvious deep concern for the unwell litigant on the other side.
You could almost miss it if you blinked.
Low-Hanging Fruit Bites Back
I think Miller saw me as low-hanging fruit.
Why wouldn’t she?
A disabled litigant in person. Poor health. No legal team. Already knocked about in another case. Angry under pressure. Easy to frame. Easy to quote. Easy to package as the problem.
But low-hanging fruit can still have teeth.
I raised the dual-involvement issue. I kept the BSB route alive. I kept writing. I kept documenting. I kept putting the missing context somewhere public.
And then came the exit.
Not a clean professional withdrawal. Not a neutral note saying counsel could no longer continue. A letter that, as used by Cepac, helped frame me as the reason for the problem.
That is the cheap shot.
Not the withdrawal itself.
The packaging.
The timing.
The blame.
One of the funniest little sideshows in this mess was the photograph.
A publicly available photograph. Found through Google. Sitting there at the top of image results, as far as I saw, like it had turned up for work early.
Apparently this became a problem.
Not the dual-involvement concern.
Not the pressure placed on an unwell disabled litigant.
Not the ethics line.
Not the professional context.
Not the fact Cepac later used her withdrawal as a weapon.
The picture.
Take it up with Google, Wendy.
I did not hack MI5. I did not rappel into chambers with a balaclava and a memory stick. I used a search engine. I cited sources. I wrote what I thought was relevant. That is called publishing. Quite a common activity outside the little velvet panic room of legal self-importance.
And here is the odd bit.
I never got a direct takedown request from Miller. Butler asked me to remove the photo before I did, because frankly the picture was never the point. It was just a picture. The words mattered more.
But a direct takedown request from her would have damaged the framing, would it not?
Because then the story becomes less clean.
It stops being “terrifying claimant targets barrister” and starts looking more like “barrister could have asked, claimant may have removed it, but respondent needed the theatre”.
That is the pattern again.
They do not want a correction mechanism.
They want an exhibit.
They do not want resolution.
They want leverage.
I see straight through it.
The Photograph Was Never The Wound
The photograph was not the injury.
The injury, for them, was that I was writing.
That I had seen the overlap.
That I had raised the dual-involvement issue.
That I had gone to the BSB.
That I had not sat there like low-hanging fruit waiting for the silk basket.
That I’d seen the bleak cases she uses to advertise what she can do.
So the public image became useful. Not because it mattered in itself, but because it could be made to sound sinister if placed in the right little litigation frame.
“Photograph of counsel”.
Very dramatic.
Almost as dramatic as collecting a cheque in a case where, I say, the tactics being used were plainly worsening an unwell disabled litigant’s condition.
But sure. Let us all clutch pearls over Google Images.
I fight with documents, search results, cited sources and public material.
They fight, in my view, with selective framing, procedural games, late bundles, medical minimising and nasty little letters designed to make professional discomfort look like claimant misconduct.
One of these things is messy.
The other is rotten.
Poor Health As A Convenient Weapon
Let us not pretend this happened in a vacuum.
I was in poor health. They knew it. The Tribunal knew it. The respondent knew it. The medical evidence was not a rumour. It was there.
Anxiety. Depression. Dysregulation under stress. Panic. Crisis context. Poor regulation under pressure.
That does not make every word perfect. It does not mean I became St Francis of Employment Litigation. It means the grown-ups in the room were supposed to understand cause and context before turning symptoms into a character trial.
Instead, the process did what it kept doing.
Pressure goes in.
Dysregulation comes out.
The reaction gets framed as the whole story.
Then everyone acts shocked that a disabled man under stress did not respond like a silk charging by the hour.
This is what happens when procedure develops an empathy bypass. Everyone can recite duties. Everyone can cite rules. Everyone can describe vulnerability in tidy language. But when the unwell person actually behaves like an unwell person under pressure, the empathy vanishes and the invoice survives.
Beautifully theoretical compassion.
Lovely stuff.
What Were Chambers Told?
Cepac then relied on replacement-counsel difficulty.
Other chambers were apparently approached. Some would not assist. This too became part of the theatre.
But what exactly were they told?
Were they told I had raised a dual-involvement concern?
Were they told there was a BSB route?
Were they told Miller had referred to ethics guidance?
Were they told the photograph was publicly available and, as far as I saw, first up on Google Images?
Were they told no direct takedown request came from Miller to me before Butler raised it?
Were they shown the full context?
Or were they handed the claimant-monster cut and asked whether they fancied stepping into the volcano?
Those are not the same thing.
One is a professional issue with uncomfortable context.
The other is a scare leaflet.
If you feed chambers a one-sided story, you do not get neutral evidence back. You get the echo you ordered.
Procedure As Performance Art
This part reeks.
The case began as a disability discrimination claim. It became a conduct hearing. Then counsel’s withdrawal became one more prop in the attempt to make the whole thing about me.
Not Cepac’s contradictions.
Not Page’s redactions.
Not the recruitment facts.
Not the medical context.
Not the repeated ambushes.
Not the Tribunal’s tolerance of professional gamesmanship.
Me.
Always me.
That is the trick.
They play procedural games with people’s lives, then act offended when the person being played does not clap politely from the trapdoor.
If She Was Right, Say It Plainly
If Miller was on clean ground, say so plainly.
If the BSB ethics line gave advice that fully supported her withdrawal, say what the professional issue was.
If my dual-involvement concern was nonsense, answer it properly.
If her withdrawal had nothing to do with the professional discomfort I had raised, explain why the timing and context should not trouble anyone.
And if the working answer was always “consult the ethics line”, perhaps the clever moment to do that was before taking a brief against the same disabled litigant again, not after the conflict concern had been raised and the optics had curdled.
If the BSB ethics line was good enough to help her leave, perhaps it should have been good enough to consult before she arrived.
But do not bury the professional-context issue, blame the unwell claimant, and let Cepac use the exit as another brick in its little strike-out wall.
That is not ethics.
That is choreography.
The Cheap Shot In The Envelope
Miller withdrew.
Cepac gained a new grievance.
The Tribunal got another dramatic exhibit.
And the actual discrimination claim slipped further behind the curtain.
That is the real function of the withdrawal letter as deployed. It did not just end counsel’s involvement. It gave the respondent a prop. Something they could wave around later to say the case had become impossible because of me.
But the missing context remains.
I raised a professional concern.
I raised it through proper channels.
As far as I know, that route was not finished.
Then counsel left and the blame landed on me.
That is not the clean story they sold.
It is the story underneath it.
The Exit Line
Wendy Miller KC left the case.
I say she left with a cheap shot tucked into the envelope.
She may be trained in procedure. She may know the language. She may know how to make a withdrawal sound dignified while leaving a blade behind.
But I know how to read a pattern.
Same disabled claimant.
Same pressure points.
Same history.
Dual-involvement concern raised.
BSB route still, as far as I know, live.
Ethics line mentioned.
Withdrawal lands.
Claimant blamed.
If that was all above board, it should not need fog.
And if the game was to treat me as low-hanging fruit, here is the awkward bit.
The fruit kept receipts.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project.
Sources (on hand if required)
- Wendy Miller KC withdrawal letter
- BSB complaint / appeal correspondence concerning dual involvement
- First Respondent material relying on counsel withdrawal and replacement-counsel difficulty
- Employment Tribunal judgment in Thompson v Cepac Limited and Page Outsourcing UK Limited
- Tribunal correspondence and claimant submissions raising the Miller / dual-involvement concern
- Publicly available Google Images result used in TCAP coverage, removed after Butler raised the point