Horsfield Menzies – Blog vs Behaviour : Daniel Rubin – TENACIOUS WHEN WE DO IT

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Daniel Rubin has found a lovely word for lawyers who refuse to leave a document problem alone: tenacious. It appears in his account of Horsfield Menzies’ victory for STARK. Meanwhile, my experience of the firm’s paperwork involved a rather different vocabulary: unsolicited bundles, disputed scope, late material and pleas for protection. Sometimes documents need chasing. Sometimes the bastards arrive in formation, commandeer the hearing and leave you explaining why you could not breathe underneath them.

That is the next stop in Blog vs Behaviour. Rubin’s brochure celebrates getting evidence into view. My complaint concerns how his firm helped build and present a case against me while I was still challenging what had arrived, when it arrived and whether I could fairly answer it. Apparently document discipline photographs beautifully from one side of the desk.

Daniel Rubin Discovers Document Discipline

On 9 June 2026, Horsfield Menzies published Rubin’s account of its High Court success for STARK Building Materials UK. The dispute concerned a former executive who joined MKM and a nine-month non-compete restriction. However, the useful part for this series concerns disclosure. According to the firm, deficiencies in the former employee’s disclosure led to a successful application for specific disclosure. The firm says the judge praised its “tenacious” approach to uncovering key documents.

Rubin names Rachel Pigg and Calum Maclean alongside himself. This is a concrete example of the firm’s litigation work, advertised under his byline. Moreover, its selling point depends on an incomplete documentary picture becoming more complete because the lawyers kept pressing. Daniel plainly understands that the first version of a file may not be sufficient. Wonderful. Perhaps he could remember that insight when somebody on the opposite side of his own litigation asks what the fuck is going on.

The Paper Was Arriving. That Was The Problem

My objection was never adequately captured by saying that I wanted more documents. Some information needed pursuing. Other material arrived uninvited, widened the dispute or appeared so late that answering it became a fresh problem. Meanwhile, I was asking what the Tribunal actually held and what the judge would see. Those questions belong together because a person cannot prepare properly against a record whose contents and boundaries keep shifting.

A bundle has a timetable as well as a page count. It also has a purpose. Before anybody congratulates themselves on producing another impressive PDF, somebody should ask whether the opponent had time to understand it, locate the underlying documents and respond. Otherwise, the index becomes a maître d’ welcoming the judge into a beautifully arranged room while the other party is still outside trying to discover which fucking building they are in.

For that reason, the relevant test is more demanding than whether an attachment eventually reached an inbox. Receipt does not create preparation time. Nor does a tidy contents page explain a disputed expansion of scope. Yet the professional presentation can make the problem look solved before the person expected to answer it has even finished identifying it.

Rubin Was Copied Into The Complaint

On 18 March 2026, more than a month before the strike-out hearing, I sent an addition to my Stage 3 complaint. I copied Daniel Rubin in. It expressly identified “the unsolicited 150-page binder and 600+ page over-bundle (breach of order)”, alongside repeated ambushes. I also challenged the treatment of redacted recruitment material and the unequal scrutiny of the parties’ conduct. I raised these specific objections while the case was still alive.

That email matters because it fixes the complaint in time. I had already sent Rubin the objection before his hearing submissions and the resulting judgment. Furthermore, I explained why I considered the process disabling. My complaint described anxiety, depression and impaired emotional regulation under stress. It expressly referred to the GP letter and records I said were already on file.

So spare me the convenient portrait of a claimant who simply produced too much correspondence for no discernible reason. There was a reason, and I put it in writing. Whether the firm accepted my complaint is a separate question. The email records the objection. Filing it under “more correspondence” does not answer a bloody word of it.

A Protective Order Is Not A Decorative Placemat

Employment Judge Salter’s case-management order sits at the centre of this dispute. My position is that its timetable was protective: it was supposed to prevent another short-notice overload and make participation possible. Yet I say the final round of late material breached that protection. Consequently, Daniel Rubin has a question to answer beyond finding a flattering adjective for persistence: did his side comply with the timetable?

I expressly raised the alleged breach again in my 26 October application to amend my appeal grounds. That application identifies three successive late-service episodes and alleges deliberate exploitation of overload, followed by reliance on the resulting absences. This is an allegation I am asking the appeal process to examine. It concerns the sequence that produced the absence, rather than treating an empty chair as a complete explanation of itself.

A safeguard which disappears when it becomes inconvenient is a piss-poor safeguard. Imagine fitting a fire door and then propping it open with the very paperwork it was meant to keep outside. Afterwards, somebody produces a report about the occupant’s unreasonable response to smoke. The metaphor is absurd. Unfortunately, it captures why I object so strongly to protection being promised on paper while the practical conditions remain intolerable.

Consolidation Does Not Reset The Clock

At paragraph 84 of the judgment, Cepac said Salter’s directions provided for continued use of the earlier bundles. It said it combined those bundles and filed additional conduct schedules. That is the explanation to examine. Consolidating old documents and adding material are different operations, however. Neither description tells the recipient how much checking remains or whether delivery complied with the timetable.

Even familiar documents need checking when their arrangement changes. References may move. Context may become harder to follow. A new schedule can give an old email a fresh accusation to answer. Therefore, saying the underlying material existed before does not settle whether the resulting package gave the other party a fair opportunity to respond. Repackaging can create work. It does not magically transfer that work into the past.

This is where the soothing vocabulary earns its keep. Consolidated. Updated. Supplementary. Each word sounds like somebody has straightened the stationery cupboard. Meanwhile, the recipient must establish what changed, what matters and what response is now required. Calling the parcel helpful does not make the bastard easier to unpack.

Protection Cannot Begin At The Hearing Door

The judgment itself reproduces my objection of 21 April, three days before the hearing. I asked the Tribunal to resolve the filing and record problems beforehand. When it refused postponement, I maintained that I could not participate safely under those conditions. I also made clear that I remained willing to attend a properly managed hearing.

The distinction matters because preparation takes place before attendance. A person needs to know the case they must answer before being expected to answer it. If the dispute concerns what is on file, which applications are live and what new material has arrived, promising to discuss everything at the start leaves the preparation problem exactly where it was. The proposed cure requires the patient to survive the condition first.

That is why my objections kept returning to timing, clarity and protection. I was asking for conditions in which I could engage. However, a narrative built around non-attendance can push those conditions out of view. The chair becomes the exhibit; the correspondence explaining why it would be empty becomes more troublesome correspondence. What a beautifully self-sealing little shitshow.

The Response Generates Another Exhibit

There is a particularly nasty consequence when objections to document handling become part of a conduct case. The person facing the material has to respond. If the answer fails to resolve the problem, they may have to ask again. Meanwhile, each request adds another item to the record. Eventually, the sheer amount of correspondence can become easier to display than the unresolved question which generated it.

In my case, I say that process repeatedly converted distress into useful material against me. The disability context was explicit in my complaint. Nevertheless, the focus kept returning to my reactions. First I objected to the conditions; then the way I objected became a further issue. The original question could remain unanswered while my vocabulary acquired its own seat at counsel’s table.

Rubin’s STARK announcement understands one side of that problem perfectly: persistence may reveal something important that would otherwise remain outside the picture. Yet the same curiosity must extend to a claimant’s repeated questions. What prompted this request? What answer did I receive? Why did the issue remain live? Counting emails is easier, of course. So is judging a restaurant by weighing the complaints book.

Daniel Rubin Was There To Argue It

Rubin represented Cepac at the hearing on 24 April 2026. The judgment attributes supplementary written submissions to him. This criticism therefore concerns his own role in presenting the case, alongside the firm’s earlier handling. I had also copied him into my March complaint. His connection to the dispute is direct.

That is what makes the later victory announcement so rich. Within weeks, the website was celebrating tenacity over a defective documentary picture in another case. Meanwhile, I was challenging how his firm’s documentary approach had affected my ability to participate. The contrast deserves more than another recital of my adjectives. Daniel can explain the dates, the scope and the opportunities to respond.

Indeed, a solicitor advertising his effectiveness in disclosure disputes should be comfortable with that exercise. Produce the relevant directions. Set out what your firm served and when. Identify the additions and any permission for departures. Then explain how the other party could prepare a response in the time available. It is a chronology, Daniel, not a fucking séance.

The Outcome Remains In The Record

The Tribunal struck out my claims and ordered £20,000 in costs. It found my conduct unreasonable, scandalous and vexatious, and said my comments about the respondent’s solicitors lacked a reasonable foundation. I dispute its treatment of the evidence and competing conduct complaints. Those findings do not change the objections recorded in my dated correspondence.

My argument concerns the conditions under which the conduct case developed. I raised document handling, the protective order and the effects on participation. Subsequently, I carried those issues into my appeal application. I still want answers. A costs order does not reach backwards through the calendar and make the complaint disappear.

Winning an application gives a lawyer an outcome to advertise. It does not answer every criticism of the route taken. Otherwise, professional accountability would consist of checking the result, congratulating the winning firm and throwing the rest of the correspondence into a skip. Convenient, certainly. Also absolute bollocks.

Explain The Fucking Timetable

Daniel Rubin’s article gives TCAP a straightforward standard to apply: examine the documentary picture closely enough to notice what is wrong with it. In STARK, his firm says persistence brought important material to light. In my case, the questions concern material arriving without proper warning, unsolicited, disputed scope, lateness and the protection that failed. Both require attention to the actual record.

So the response I want is equally straightforward. Identify the operative deadlines. Put the service dates beside them. Explain what changed between versions and how much time remained to answer it. Where the directions required permission, identify it. Finally, address why my objections did not justify the protection I sought. Another character sketch will not do that work.

TCAP will publish a substantive response and correct anything the evidence requires. Until then, Rubin’s polished celebration of document discipline sits beside the complaints I copied to him about his own firm’s approach. You can put “tenacious” in the brochure, Daniel. Put the fucking timetable beside it.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

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