Horsfield Menzies – Blog vs Behaviour : ANGUS MENZIES – THE OUTCOME FIRST, THE REASONS LATER

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Most employment lawyers publish the respectable version. Investigate properly. Keep an open mind. Follow the evidence. Record the reasons. Then Angus Menzies scuttles out from beneath the Horsfield Menzies skirting board carrying the operating manual in his teeth.

Fungus has done this before. He explained how claimants can give up, settle cheaply or run out of money, and how that may suit the employer perfectly well. He later toured the refusal of a postponement to an autistic litigant who suffered a panic attack during her hearing. Other authors write about how the system ought to behave. Angus keeps describing what the machinery can survive.

This time, the Employment Appeal Tribunal found that an original Tribunal had left critical questions unanswered in a whistleblowing dismissal case. It sent the issue back for proper consideration. Angus looked into that open question and predicted that the same result would return wearing stronger reasons. The judgment had not yet been repaired. The indiscreet little goblin was already ordering grout.

The EAT Did Not Order A Repaint

Angus’s article concerned Henderson v GCRM Ltd and others. The claimant, an embryologist, had raised staffing concerns over almost two years. Her line manager later appointed an investigator to examine allegations about her conduct. A different manager, new to another company within the group and unaware of the protected disclosures, ultimately dismissed her.

The original Tribunal found the dismissal ordinarily unfair. It also found that the protected disclosures had materially influenced what happened. However, it did not find them to be the principal reason for dismissal, so the automatic whistleblowing dismissal claim failed. The claimant appealed, arguing that the Tribunal had not properly examined whether the line manager had manipulated the later decision-maker through false narratives, distorted evidence or hidden information.

The EAT accepted that the Tribunal had left those critical questions unanswered. Its reasons hinted at manipulation, but never resolved whether it happened. Therefore, the EAT allowed the first appeal ground and returned the section 103A complaint to the same Tribunal to apply the proper test. It rejected two other claimant grounds, while the respondents separately succeeded in overturning the detriment findings against the employer and dismissing manager.

That distinction matters. The EAT did not decide that the claimant must win. Nor did it decide that the original result must survive. It identified a hole in the reasoning and ordered the Tribunal to answer the questions properly. The issue returned for determination, not cosmetic refurbishment.

The EAT Found A Hole. Fungus Brought Sealant.

Angus summarised the remittal and then supplied this exquisite little eruption of professional candour:

“One suspects that the original Tribunal will come up with rather more water-tight findings to support its original decision”.

There it is. The outcome first. The reasons later.

The unanswered question concerned whether a dismissal had been shaped by manipulation, invented reasons or hidden evidence. A normal response might be that the original Tribunal must now examine the evidence with an open mind. Fungus instead anticipated the original decision returning with improved waterproofing. Apparently the purpose of the remittal was not to discover the answer. It was to stop the old answer leaking.

This is why Angus remains TCAP’s most useful Horsfield Menzies author. Simon Horsfield writes the corporate upholstery. Sam Butler writes the seminar notes. Daniel Rubin writes the victory announcements. Angus wanders into the boiler room, points at a pressure valve and tells everyone which direction the shrapnel will travel.

Reverse Reasoning In A Sensible Tie

Reverse reasoning begins with the desired conclusion and works backwards. Evidence becomes useful if it supports the answer. Gaps become drafting problems. Contrary material becomes context, noise or conduct. If an appellate court identifies missing analysis, the response is not to reopen the conclusion. It is to make the explanation more water-tight.

When it works, reverse reasoning rarely announces itself. The conclusion strolls through the front door. The evidence arrives later with a fucking clipboard and pretends it performed the inspection. Contradictions get routed around. Missing findings become a snagging list. What looks like analysis is often the old answer wearing fresh plaster.

That is the ugly implication of Angus’s wording. He did not say the evidence would probably justify the original outcome after proper examination. He predicted stronger findings to support that outcome. The destination stayed fixed. Only the legal plumbing needed attention. It is arse-backwards adjudication dressed in a sensible tie.

Perhaps Angus meant nothing more than a prediction based on the Tribunal’s existing findings. Fine. He can explain that. However, words matter, especially when an employment solicitor chooses them while commenting on a case about concealed motives, influenced decision-makers and incomplete reasoning. “Water-tight” is what you make a container when you already know what must remain inside.

The Complainant Becomes The Conduct Problem

The underlying facts make the comment even richer. Angus’s summary records a claimant who repeatedly raised staffing concerns. Her manager viewed her complaints and requests as part of the problem. Sounds fucking familiar. He initiated the investigation, remained influential and helped shape the information reaching the eventual decision-maker. The dismissing manager may have entered without the original hostility, but she did not enter an empty room.

That is the familiar institutional magic trick. A person raises concerns. The concerns generate friction. The friction generates correspondence. The correspondence generates a conduct process. Eventually, the conduct process becomes the main event and the original complaint is reduced to an irritating backstory told by somebody the file now describes as difficult.

Fungus has previously explained the economic version of this manoeuvre. A claimant may run out of money, time or emotional capacity before the merits are resolved. Here he offers the reasoning version. Even when the appellate court identifies a failure to examine whether the narrative was manipulated, Angus suspects the original answer will survive after somebody tightens the bolts.

Bad Process, Genuine Belief, Employer Comfort

The legal distinction in Henderson is technical. A later decision-maker may genuinely believe the material put before them even if another person influenced the process. Different statutory claims ask different questions about whose motive matters and which detriment was pleaded. That is why the EAT remitted one issue while dismissing others.

Angus’s choice of takeaway is more revealing than the doctrine. After describing an investigation which the original Tribunal found inadequate and a dismissal outside the range of reasonable responses, he tells employers they can “at least take some comfort” from the limit on attributing another person’s unlawful motive to an innocent decision-maker.

Comfort. Of course. A worker loses her job following an unreasonable enquiry. The protected disclosures materially influence the route. The Tribunal fails to answer the manipulation question. The EAT sends that issue back. Somewhere in the rubble, Fungus finds a travel pillow for management.

The legal point may be accurate. TCAP’s point concerns the instinct. When a case exposes how an apparently innocent decision-maker can receive a distorted picture, Angus’s commercial eye lands on the surviving protection for employers. He does not merely describe the guardrail. He invites the client to get comfortable behind it.

Now Put That Beside The Cepac File

My Cepac case was a disability-discrimination claim, not a whistleblowing claim. Angus Menzies did not represent Cepac at the April 2026 hearing; Daniel Rubin did. I am criticising Angus for the words Angus published, not inventing a role for him in somebody else’s advocacy.

The structural comparison is still brutal. My claim began with recruitment, a mental-health disclosure and a promised interview which never materialised. The completed merits hearing never happened. Instead, the case ended at a conduct hearing focused on my correspondence, publications and non-attendance. The Tribunal struck out the claims, ordered £20,000 in costs and said my comments about the respondent’s solicitors lacked a reasonable foundation.

I dispute how that conduct narrative was assembled and how my evidence was treated. I had raised the late material, portal uncertainty, the alleged breach of a protective order, my disability and the reasons participation had become impossible. Yet the machine repeatedly treated my reactions as self-explanatory misconduct. The pressure disappeared from view while the response received page numbers.

That is why Angus’s prediction lands like a brick through the conservatory. My appeal argues, among other matters, that the reasoning treated the adverse conclusion as fixed while failing to examine the contested causes and evidence properly. Then along comes a Horsfield Menzies partner casually predicting that another Tribunal will answer an appellate criticism by returning the same decision with more water-tight findings. He could scarcely illustrate the complaint more efficiently if TCAP had paid him by the paragraph.

The Self-Sealing Conduct Machine

Reverse reasoning becomes especially vicious when the subject objects to it. Challenge the bundle and the challenge becomes more correspondence. Contest the characterisation and the rebuttal becomes failure to accept responsibility. Explain the disability context and the explanation becomes an excuse. Publish criticism and the criticism becomes proof that the original concern about your conduct was justified.

The machine is self-sealing because every attempt to open it produces more material for the lid. Heads, the institution was right. Tails, you have displayed an unreasonable refusal to accept that the institution was right. The coin can land on its edge, roll under the cabinet and disappear into another dimension; somebody will still enter “heads” on the case-management system.

That is not evidential analysis. It is a character prosecution with office stationery. Once the person has been classified as the problem, chronology becomes decoration and causation becomes insolence. The institution no longer asks what produced the conduct. It asks how much of the conduct it can fit inside the next PDF.

Reasons Are Not Silicone Sealant

An appeal is supposed to matter because reasoning matters. If a Tribunal has failed to determine a critical question, the cure is to determine it. The parties, evidence and legal test must remain capable of affecting the result. Otherwise, remittal becomes a quality-control exercise in preserving the product rather than checking whether it should ever have left the factory.

Courts sometimes remit cases to the same Tribunal because it already knows the evidence and can correct a limited error efficiently. That practical rule does not convert the original outcome into sacred furniture. The result must remain open to whatever follows from answering the missing question honestly.

Angus’s “water-tight findings” line reverses that order. It presents the findings as reinforcement for the old result. The house has subsidence, but Fungus has arrived with a caulking gun and a client-care smile. Never mind whether the foundations moved. Look how professionally the crack has vanished.

Answer The Fucking Question, Angus

Why did Angus expect the original decision to survive before the remitted questions had been answered? Did he believe the existing evidence already compelled that result? If so, which findings made the manipulation issue immaterial? If the answer was genuinely open, why describe the likely exercise as producing stronger findings to support the old outcome?

And what does “water-tight” mean in this context? A complete and honest examination may confirm the original decision. It may also undermine it. The proper objective is a lawful answer supported by the evidence, not a conclusion armoured against the next appeal. The difference should not trouble an employment-law partner for more than a fucking heartbeat.

TCAP will publish a substantive response and correct anything the evidence requires. Until then, Angus has added another chapter to the Fungus operating manual. First came attrition. Then came disability and postponement. Now comes appellate repair: keep the outcome, reinforce the reasons and send the old answer back through the rain.

The EAT found unanswered questions. Angus expected the same answer with better waterproofing. That is reverse reasoning with a fucking maintenance contract.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Sources

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