No. UKEAT/0113/06/RN

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

	At the Tribunal
	On 22nd - 26th May 2006
Judgment delivered on 1 September 2006

Before
THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE UNDERHILL
MR S YEBOAH
MR B BEYNON

______________________________________________________________________________

HER MAJESTY’S ATTORNEY GENERAL	APPLICANT

MR S DEMAN	RESPONDENT

Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

	APPEARANCES

For the Applicant	MR T LINDEN
(Of Counsel)
Instructed by:
The Treasury Solicitor 
Employment Team
One Kemble Street
London
WC2B 4TS
	
For the Respondent	MR J DAVIES QC
(Of Counsel)
Instructed by:
Messrs Hudgell & Partners Solicitors
35/36 Market Street
Woolwich
London
SE18 6QP

Summary 

Practice and Procedure: Restriction of Proceedings Order/Vexatious Litigant 

Litigant had brought forty claims for (mainly) race discrimination against higher education institutions, trade unions and others and had made over forty appeals to EAT and been repeatedly criticised for way in which those proceedings and appeals had been conducted - Held to have habitually and persistently instituted vexatious "proceedings" (held to cover both the institution of the initial proceedings and the institution of the appeals) and to have habitually and persistently made vexatious applications in the course of those proceedings within the meaning of s. 33 (1) (a) and (b) of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 - Restriction of proceedings order made 

INTRODUCTION

1. 	This is an application by Her Majesty’s Attorney General under s. 33 of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 for a restriction of proceedings order against Mr. Suresh Deman.  S. 33, which is headed “restriction of vexatious proceedings”, fulfils a similar function to s. 42 of the Supreme Court Act 1981 and is in broadly similar terms.  So far as relevant, it provides as follows:

“(1) 	If, on an application made by the Attorney General or the Lord Advocate under this section, the Appeal Tribunal is satisfied that a person has habitually and persistently and without any reasonable ground – 

(a)	instituted vexatious proceedings, whether in an employment tribunal or before the Appeal Tribunal, and whether against the same person or against different persons, or

(b)	made vexatious applications in any proceedings, whether in an employment tribunal or before the Appeal Tribunal

the Appeal Tribunal may, after hearing the person or giving him an opportunity of being heard, make a restriction of proceedings order.

(2)	A “restriction of proceedings order” is an order that – 

(a)	no proceedings shall without the leave of the Appeal Tribunal be instituted in any employment tribunal or before the Appeal Tribunal by the person against whom the order is made,

(b)	any proceedings instituted by him in any employment tribunal or before the Appeal Tribunal before the making of the order shall not be continued by him without the leave of the Appeal Tribunal, and

(c)	no application (other than one for leave under this section) is to be made by him in any proceedings in any employment tribunal or before the Appeal Tribunal without the leave of the Appeal Tribunal.

(3)	A restriction of proceedings order may provide that it is to cease to have effect at the end of a specified period, but otherwise it remains in force indefinitely.”

The circumstances giving rise to the application are as follows.

2.	Mr. Deman’s academic and employment history.  Mr. Deman is an academic economist, now aged 52.  He was born and educated in India (of Hindu background) but has US citizenship: he describes his nationality as Indian/American.  He has held a variety of academic posts in various parts of the world and has a considerable number of academic publications to his credit.  Between 1983 and 1987 he was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh.  Following the termination of his employment there, he brought successful proceedings against the University for racial discrimination and was in 1996 awarded damages and interest of over $45,000.  His first employment in the United Kingdom was between February 1994 and October 1995, when he was a Lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast (“QUB”).  In the course of his employment there and following its termination he brought proceedings against a number of parties, including the University itself, in the Fair Employment Tribunal and the Industrial Tribunal: as at March 2003 there had been a total of nineteen complaints to the Fair Employment Tribunal (naming 79 respondents) and 21 complaints to the Industrial Tribunal (naming 68 respondents).  Fourteen complaints were withdrawn and three were dismissed.  The complaints which were unresolved as at June 2005 were eventually settled for £30,000.  Between 1997 and 1998 Mr. Deman studied for a D. Phil. at the University of Bradford; but in the event he was only offered an M. Phil.  He brought proceedings in the County Court claiming that the refusal of a D. Phil. was on racial grounds; but the claim was dismissed when Mr. Deman failed to appear at the date fixed for the trial of preliminary issues.  In November 1997 he took a post as Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich.  In November 1999 he was dismissed for misconduct.  He brought proceedings for unfair dismissal and racial discrimination: we will have to consider these in more detail below.  He has not held any other academic post in the United Kingdom (or elsewhere) since then.  Over the period since the termination of his employment in Belfast Mr. Deman has applied for a very large number of academic positions in Great Britain.  Those applications of which we have had specific evidence in these proceedings amount to over seventy over a period of about ten years; but we were told on Mr. Deman’s behalf that the number is in fact approaching one thousand.

3.  	Mr. Deman’s applications to the Employment Tribunals.  Between 1996 and 2005 Mr. Deman has brought at least forty claims in the Employment Tribunal.  (We say “at least” because the evidence before the Tribunal may be incomplete).  The great majority are claims for racial discrimination arising out of the refusal of an academic institution to short-list or appoint him for a position for which he had applied.  In most, both “primary” discrimination and victimisation are alleged: the claims for victimisation mostly reflect the fact that Mr. Deman believes that his history of litigation (initially against QUB but subsequently against other institutions) has become widely known and has been held against him.  The number of institutions proceeded against is nineteen (some have been proceeded against more than once), but the number of respondents is much greater, since in most of the cases one or more individuals said to be associated with the decision complained of are also proceeded against.  Many of the claims in question cover the refusal of more than one post: the total number of posts in respect of which a complaint is made is about seventy (being the figure referred to in para. 2 above).  In addition to claims of this character there are:

(a)	the proceedings against the University of Greenwich for unfair dismissal and race discrimination referred to in para. 2 above;

(b)	six separate claims against the Association of University Teachers (“the AUT”) and a number of its officers, arising out of alleged discrimination in the assistance offered to Mr. Deman as a member of the union in his claim against QUB;

(c)	one claim against the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (“NATFHE”) and two of its officers arising out of allegations of discrimination in the service offered to Mr. Deman as a member of the union in his claim against the University of Greenwich;

(d)	a claim against Northern Recruitment Group plc (“NRG”) and the Department of Trade and Industry (“the DTI”) arising out of the failure of an application on his part to be appointed a lay member of the Employment Tribunals.

We shall have to review the history of these proceedings in some detail later in this judgment.  Most, although not all, have been unsuccessful.  Many have had lengthy and complex interlocutory histories and some have resulted in very long hearings:  Mr. Deman’s behaviour in relation to the interlocutory conduct of the cases and at the hearings has been the subject of considerable criticism by a number of Tribunals.  The decisions of the Tribunals, both interlocutory and final, have been the subject of a very large number of appeals by Mr. Deman to the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal.  At least forty appeals to the Appeal Tribunal have been identified (though again this may not be the full number): although a handful have been successful, most have failed, mostly at the preliminary hearing or “sift” stage.  Mr. Deman’s appeals to the Court of Appeal – most of which also have been dismissed as wholly without merit - has resulted in the making by Brooke LJ on 4th February 2005 of extended civil restraint orders in two of these cases (together with two other cases originating in the High Court – see para. 4 below).  Mr. Deman applied for these to be set aside, but that application was refused by Buxton LJ on 15th June 2005.

4.	Other litigation.  Mr. Deman has been involved in proceedings in the common law courts.  We have already referred to his claim for racial discrimination against Bradford University.  He has in addition brought proceedings for judicial review against a number of institutions, including Bradford University, the University of Greenwich, the Lord Chancellor’s Department and the Commission for Racial Equality (“the CRE”).  Although we have been given some information about these cases, they are not directly relevant to this application.

5.	The grounds for the Attorney General’s application.  It is common ground that an application under s. 33 involves a two-stage exercise.  First, the Attorney General must satisfy this Tribunal that either ground (a) or ground (b) under s-s. (1) is made out - that is to say either that the respondent “has habitually and persistently and without any reasonable ground … instituted vexatious proceedings” (“the vexatious proceedings ground”) or that he has “habitually and persistently and without any reasonable ground … made vexatious applications in any proceedings” (“the vexatious applications ground”).  Secondly, and only if it is satisfied of either or both of those matters, the Tribunal must consider, as a matter of discretion, whether a restriction of proceedings order should be made.  As to the first stage, the Attorney General in this case relies on both grounds, asserting both that the majority of the proceedings in the Employment Tribunal and the Appeal Tribunal referred to in para. 3 above were vexatiously instituted and also that in the course of those proceedings Mr. Deman has habitually and persistently made vexatious applications.  As regards the second stage, Mr Linden, who appears before us for the Attorney General, invites this Tribunal to have regard not only to the facts on which he directly relies in relation to the first stage but also to broader considerations relating to Mr. Deman’s conduct which may not themselves strictly be covered by the rubric “vexatious applications”.  Two features of the case which distinguish it from the previous cases in which s. 33 has been invoked must be noted:

(1)	Although, as we have noted above, Mr. Deman’s conduct of the proceedings referred to in para. 3 has attracted a good deal of criticism from the Tribunals in question, there are only a few instances in which he has been held explicitly to have acted vexatiously.  This is not therefore a case in which this Tribunal can simply rely on a series of findings of vexatious conduct made by the original Tribunals.  What Mr. Linden invites us to do is to make our own assessment of whether Mr. Deman acted vexatiously in the respects on which he relies, irrespective of whether the original Tribunal held him to have done so or indeed was explicitly critical of his conduct at all.  Mr John Davies QC, who appears before us for Mr. Deman and has argued his case with great skill and good judgment, did not accept that this was the right approach.  He submitted that we should not make findings of vexatiousness unless the original Tribunal had done so.  We reject that submission.  S. 33 provides that we may make an order where we are “satisfied” that one or other of grounds (a) or (b) is made out.  Although in a straightforward case a series of rulings by the original Tribunals may be sufficient to satisfy this Tribunal of the required matters, there is nothing in the wording of the statute to suggest that that is the only basis on which it can be so satisfied.  There are many reasons why an original Tribunal faced with proceedings or an application which could properly be held to be vexatious may never have occasion to make a ruling to that effect; nor indeed may it have as much information before it as the Appeal Tribunal.  It would be a serious, and wholly artificial, limitation on the value of the s. 33 procedure if in such cases this Tribunal were precluded from considering the question of vexatiousness for itself.

(2)	Mr. Linden emphasised that he placed just as much weight in making the present application on ground (b) - the making by Mr. Deman of vexatious applications - as on ground (a) - the institution of vexatious proceedings.  This feature is not present in any of the earlier cases to which our attention has been drawn in which this Tribunal has been asked to make an order under s. 33: those have all been concerned only with a history of instituting vexatious proceedings.  Consideration of this ground inevitably involves this Tribunal becoming more closely involved in the details of the original case.

6.	The shape of this judgment.  The nature of the Attorney General’s case requires us to undertake a survey of the entirety of the Tribunal claims brought by Mr. Deman in Great Britain (so far as revealed by the evidence) from the mid 1990s onward.  This is a laborious task, but it cannot be avoided.  Papers relating to the cases referred to in paras. 3 and 4 were put before us as exhibits to two affidavits of Fiona Grose, a legal officer in the Treasury Solicitor’s Department, and (to a lesser extent) as exhibits to an affirmation from Mr. Deman.  These are extremely voluminous (although even so they are far from complete).  We will attempt to keep our account focussed as narrowly as possible on the features of the litigation which are relevant to our assessment: the decisions to which we refer are on the public record, and although we have tried to quote sufficient passages from them to explain our reasoning, the full texts are available for reference if required.  There is no entirely satisfactory way of structuring the account, but we have decided to consider in turn each of the institutions against which Mr. Deman has brought proceedings, taking them broadly in chronological order by reference to when proceedings were first brought against that institution, save that we have treated the litigation against the AUT and NATFHE and the claim against NRG/DTI separately.  This approach has the consequence that we will be dealing separately with events which overlapped in point of time and in some instances influenced one another; but a more strictly chronological approach would have caused equal problems.  There are also a limited number of points which come up in relation to more than one set of proceedings and which it is convenient to deal with together.  Accordingly the structure of the remainder of this judgment is as follows:

(A)	Points common to the cases reviewed

(B)	Review of Mr. Deman’s Tribunal claims – divided between (1) claims against academic institutions and (2) other claims

(C)	Decision.

7.	We have been referred to a number of cases in which this Tribunal has considered applications under s. 33, and also some cases on the equivalent High Court jurisdiction.  In the event there have been no issues of law argued before us on which those authorities have given direct assistance (save possibly for that considered at para. 175 below), though we have found them useful by way of background.  For the record, the authorities cited to us were: Re Vernazza [1959] 1 WLR 622; Attorney General v. Jones [1990] 1 WLR 859; Attorney General v. Barker [2000] 1 FLR 759; Attorney General v. Covey [2001] EWCA (Civ) 254; Attorney General v. Wheen [2000] IRLR 461 and [2001] IRLR 91; Attorney General v. Tyrrell (UKEAT/0236/03); Attorney General v. Ayovuare (UKEAT/0614/03); Attorney General v. D’Souza (UKEAT/0139/04); Attorney General v. Roberts (UKEAT/0058/05); Attorney General v. Kuttappan (UKEAT/0478/05); Attorney General v. Bruce (UKEAT/0586/05); and Attorney General v. Perotti [2006] EWHC 1002 (Admin). 

(A)	Common Points

8.	Council for Ethnic Minority and India–America Society.   A feature of many of the claims brought by Mr. Deman is that correspondence on his behalf has been conducted to a greater or lesser extent in the name of an entity described as the Council for Ethnic Minority (“CEM”) or (less often) an apparently different entity called the India-America Society (“I‑AS”) the signatory of such letters purports to be someone other than Mr. Deman, though who it is said to be is not always decipherable.  The involvement of CEM and I-AS in Mr. Deman’s litigation has at several points given rise to complications and sometimes to confusion and suspicion on the part of Tribunals.  The extent to which these entities – which have at times shared addresses and telephone numbers with Mr. Deman’s home address - have any substantial existence independent of Mr. Deman is questionable: he does not accept that they are simply alter egos for himself, but he does appear to accept that their principal activity consists in activities associated with his claims to be the victim of racial discrimination (see the Reasons of the Employment Tribunal in the Aberystwyth case referred to at paras. 114-5 below).  Another entity which it is convenient to mention at this point is “Mayo-Deman Consultants”, which is apparently a partnership of some kind of Mr. Deman and his wife, Jennifer Mayo.

9.	Mr. Graham, Mr. McCue and Mr. Titterington.  In many of his claims Mr. Deman has been assisted by one or more of three associates who it appears that he met while at QUB – Mr. Andrew Graham, Mr. James McCue and Mr. Albert Titterington.  All of them are put forward as having an expertise in discrimination claims (or, in Mr. Graham’s case, as “a professional expert on bias”), and they have on different occasions assisted Mr. Deman either as witnesses or representatives or as “McKenzie friends”.  The conduct of Mr. Graham in particular has been subject to criticism by more than one Tribunal.

10.	Mr. Deman’s perception of bias in the Tribunal system.   In the course of his experiences in the Tribunal system both in Northern Ireland and in Great Britain Mr. Deman has become convinced that it is permeated by “institutional racism”.  An important stage in the development of this perception was an earlier s. 33 application made to this Tribunal by the Solicitor General in April 2000: the application was in the event withdrawn in February 2001, though it resulted in some of Mr. Deman’s then current cases being temporarily stayed.  Whatever the origins of this application, it appears that the then President of Employment Tribunals, HH Judge Prophet, may have been associated with it.  Mr. Deman regards Judge Prophet as a principal orchestrator of a campaign which has influenced attitudes to him throughout the Employment Tribunal system, particularly in Leeds where Judge Prophet had previously been Regional Chairman.  He and Mr. Graham, Mr. McCue and Mr. Titterington have produced a number of witness statements or similar documents particularising his case of a pervasive bias against him: in particular, Mr. Deman has produced various versions of a lengthy “Affidavit on Bias and Institutionalised Racism in the Tribunals” which has been deployed in several cases.  It is his case that a similar bias exists in the Employment Appeal Tribunal.  He also believes that many of those who are biased against him are motivated by association with the Labour party and/or by racist or sectarian motives.  These views are expressed in a number of letters, witness statements and affidavits in intemperate and sometimes racially or otherwise offensive language.  The “affidavit on bias” referred to above, for example, in referring to his experiences in the AUT litigation (see paras. 143 ff. below) says that he had the impression that “the Tribunal believed white Jews could not do anything wrong”; and, in dealing with the Leeds Metropolitan University case, the affidavit objects to Mr. Deman having his case heard by “a Muslim lay member of Pakistani origin”.  In the version sworn for the purposes of his appeal in the City University case (see para. 107 below) Mr. Deman says:

“The procedure at the Tribunals seems to be as follows: Appellant’s ET1 will go first to HHJ Prophet (EAT Judge) or Mr. Meeran (president of ET) for adjudication without hearing the evidence although senior counsels after carefully considering evidence have given favourable opinions on the merit of his claims.  Then, they will direct the Regional Chairman to pick a Chairman and two lay members, in all likelihood but exception are not ruled out, one moppet and other puppet supporter of Labour Party.  The Tribunal will come to hear the case with a preconceived agenda.  The Appellant and his lay representatives will be harassed at the hearing and the case will be dismissed after observing some formalities for window dressing … I have yet to see a member of the judiciary at the EAT or ET who came to hear my cases with an open mind.”   

An earlier passage in the affidavit asserts that the position had become worse since the appointment of Judge Meeran as President of the Employment Tribunals, because the bias of the Tribunals has been hidden by his identity as an “African-Muslim of Indian… ethnic origin”: he is described as “providing great services to employers and his Labour Party bosses”.

11.	“Judge Prophet’s witness statement”.  On 21st February 2002 in the context of proceedings brought by Mr. Deman against Leeds Metropolitan University (see paras. 110 ff. below), CEM wrote to Judge Prophet enclosing a draft witness statement in his name.  The statement recites, in a tendentious manner, Mr. Deman’s view of his experiences in the Tribunal system, including but not limited to his correspondence with Judge Prophet when he was Regional Chairman in Leeds and his involvement in the making of the earlier abortive s. 33 application.  Judge Prophet was invited in the covering letter to peruse the draft witness statement and make any changes that he wished.  It was made plain that it was Mr. Deman’s intention to call Judge Prophet as a witness to give evidence in accordance with the draft witness statement in one or more ongoing Tribunal proceedings.  Judge Prophet replied in the following terms:

“Thank you for your letter of 21 February 2002.

	There is no basis upon which it would be appropriate for me to give evidence on behalf of Mr. Deman to the Employment Tribunal hearing the case of Mr. Deman against Leeds Metropolitan University and others.  

	In the light of your letter, and of other recent cases being brought by Mr. Deman, I am approaching the Attorney General with a view to having Mr. Deman declared a vexatious litigant.”

CEM replied in intemperate terms by a letter dated 25th February 2002.  Thereafter Mr. Deman sought to deploy the draft witness statement of Judge Prophet in a number of his cases.  We mention this episode at this stage because it is common to a number of the cases which we review below rather than because we regard it as a uniquely serious instance of misconduct by Mr. Deman.  It is fair to say that it is not entirely clear that Mr. Deman ever stated explicitly that the statement represented Judge Prophet’s views, though his account of its status seems to have been equivocal; but none of the Tribunals before whom the draft witness statement was deployed understood that it represented a genuine witness statement emanating from Judge Prophet. 

12.	Mr. Deman’s perception of bias in the world of higher education.  It has for some time been Mr. Deman’s perception that the world of higher education is biased against racial minorities in general but more particularly against himself - because of his record of litigation against initially Pittsburgh and QUB and latterly Bradford and other British universities.  It is clear both from his correspondence and from the evidence which he has sought to call in several of his cases that he believes that he is the victim of an “old-boy network” or a “grapevine” (involving the Universities Personnel Association) by which information hostile to him is passed to institutions to whom he has applied for appointment.  He says in his affirmation in these proceedings:

“My past employers, University of Pittsburgh, Queen’s University of Belfast, University of Greenwich have been actively involved in disparaging campaign against me and have made my life difficult and have also closed the ranks in the Higher Education Sector in UK.”

13.	Some conventions.  We have referred throughout to the Employment Tribunals, although at the beginning of the period with which we are concerned they were known as Industrial Tribunals.  Save where it has been necessary to distinguish we have used the term “discrimination” to cover both “primary” discrimination and victimisation: the claims brought by Mr. Deman almost invariably cover both forms.  When quoting from documents we have silently corrected errors of punctuation and spelling.  When Mr. Deman has brought more than one case against a particular institution we refer to the various cases as, e.g., “Sheffield 1” and “Sheffield 2”.

(B)	Mr Deman’s Claims

(1)	Claims Against Academic Institutions

Sheffield University

Sheffield 1

14.	In April 1997 Mr. Deman applied to the University of Sheffield for the post of Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in the School of Management.  He was short-listed for both posts but was unsuccessful at interview.  On 8th August 1997 he instituted proceedings claiming racial discrimination.  The respondents were the University and Prof. Gow, the Chairman of the School of Management.  

15.	 The case was heard on two days in January 1998 by an Employment Tribunal in Sheffield, chaired by Mr. Williams, and the decision was sent to the parties on 15th January 1998.  The application was dismissed.  The Tribunal was satisfied that the University’s decisions were based on Mr. Deman’s performance at interview and not on his race.  The evidence of the University’s witnesses was that his performance had been very poor indeed.  One described it as “the worst interview I have ever sat through” and “pretty appalling”.  Mr. Deman relied on a number of specific incidents in support of his allegation that the University’s decisions were discriminatory.  In relation to each of these the Tribunal rejected Mr. Deman’s account of what had occurred.  Although the Tribunal did not in terms find that Mr. Deman had lied, Mr Linden submits that that is the inevitable inference, and precisely that inference was drawn by a subsequent Tribunal in Sheffield 2 (see para. 19 below).  However, the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Sheffield 2 was not satisfied that the findings made in Sheffield 1 amounted to findings of bad faith on the part of Mr. Deman.  Since it is not necessary for us for present purposes to take a view on that issue we do not do so.  

16.	Mr. Deman appealed.  On 10th May 1999 the appeal was dismissed at the preliminary hearing stage, on the basis that it was essentially an appeal on issues of fact.  

Sheffield 2

17.	In 2000 Mr. Deman applied for three further posts at the University of Sheffield.  He was not short-listed for those posts.  On 2nd June 2000 he started proceedings in the Employment Tribunal for racial discrimination: the respondents were the University itself and Prof. Owen, the Head of the School of Accountancy and Finance.

18.	The application was heard before a Tribunal in Sheffield chaired (again) by Mr Williams, over sixteen days between May 2002 and March 2004.  There are various matters to which we should draw attention relating to the conduct of that hearing:

(1)	Mr. Deman sought a witness order to obtain the attendance of HH Judge Prophet on the basis of the draft witness statement referred to in para. 11 above.  The application was refused.  It was plainly misconceived: Judge Prophet could give no evidence on any matter in issue in the proceedings.  The only purpose of the application can have been to further Mr. Deman’s case that he had in the past been unfairly treated by the Tribunal system.

(2)	Mr. Deman sought an order that the proceedings should be video-taped.  That application too was refused. 

(3)	Mr. Deman adduced affidavit evidence from Mr. Graham dealing with his wider allegations as to the institutionalised bias in the Employment Tribunal service.  Although the Tribunal did not exclude this evidence, it again plainly had no bearing on any of the issues in the case.

(4)	The hearing was scheduled to resume after a long break on 27th October 2003.  Mr. Deman sought to have the resumed dates vacated in order that he could attend criminal proceedings in which he was a witness in London on 29th and 30th October.  That application was rejected, but the Tribunal agreed to adjust its sitting hours in order to enable Mr. Deman to leave early on 28th October.  Mr. Deman then renewed his application on a different basis.  He said that he had not appreciated that it was half-term and that he would encounter severe problems as regards childminding.  The Tribunal dismissed that application.  On Friday 24th October Mr. Deman renewed the application again, this time on the basis that he was suffering from an anxiety attack and was due to see his doctor that evening.  The Tribunal declined to act without proper medical evidence.  Mr. Deman duly appeared on 27th October, accompanied by Mr. Graham, and renewed his application.  The certificate and prescription on which Mr. Deman sought to rely gave rise to further questions and further enquiries were made with Mr. Deman’s doctor.  The Tribunal was plainly sceptical of the genuineness of the medical reasons advanced, given that – as it said in subsequent Reasons – this was the third ground advanced by Mr. Deman in support of his application for an adjournment.  The debate about whether there should be an adjournment eventually consumed most of the time set aside for the hearing.  However, the Tribunal concluded that Mr. Deman was fit enough to attend and properly and fairly conduct his case.

(5)	Both Mr. Deman’s evidence and his cross-examination of the respondents’ witnesses were extremely protracted.  

19.	The eventual decision of the Tribunal, given by a Reserved Decision sent to the parties on 27th May 2004, was that the claim should be dismissed.  So far as the allegations of “primary” discrimination are concerned, the Tribunal was sure that considerations of race had nothing to do with the University’s decision.  As noted above, as regards Mr. Deman’s victimisation claim part of the Tribunal’s reasoning depended on reading the findings in Sheffield 1 as imputing bad faith to Mr. Deman.

20.	By letter dated 15th June 2004 CEM on behalf of Mr. Deman applied for a review of the Tribunal’s decision on his adjournment application on 27th October.  The application, being made nine months after the event and indeed after the substantive decision, was plainly misconceived and was refused. 

21.	Mr. Deman appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the substantive decision of the Employment Tribunal.  On 15th March 2006 an Appeal Tribunal chaired by Bean J. dismissed the appeal as regards the allegations of primary discrimination; but it held that the Tribunal’s reasoning on the victimisation issue was erroneous in as much as it treated the Tribunal in Sheffield 1 as having found Mr. Deman to have lied; and that issue was remitted to another Tribunal.  The Appeal Tribunal observed, however, that it was hard to see how even if Mr. Deman were to succeed in his victimisation claim he could receive any compensation save for injury to feelings.

Sheffield 3

22.	On 16th January 2002 Mr. Deman brought further proceedings against the University of Sheffield and Prof. Owen alleging racial discrimination.  The claim related to two distinct posts.  The claim relating to the first was dismissed by the Tribunal on 3rd October 2002 on the basis that it was out of time.  The balance of the claim was settled in November 2003: the University agreed to pay Mr. Deman £11,000, to be split equally between CEM and I-AS.
	
KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON

23.	Mr. Deman brought three sets of proceedings against King’s College, London (in two of them also naming as a respondent its personnel manager), in June 1998, September 1998 and April 2000.  All three arose from his non-short-listing for one or more posts in its School of Management.  None of the claims reached a hearing, and all three were settled in March 2001: the College agreed to pay £12,000 to I-AS (which is said in the settlement agreement to be “applying for charitable status”).  

24.	The documents in evidence relating to these proceedings are patchy.  But there is evidence in the papers of a number of applications being made by Mr. Deman for postponement of hearings on ground which included ill-health, difficulties in obtaining representation and litigation in other Tribunals: these are themes to which we will return below.

LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

25.	On 30th January 1998 the London Business School advertised posts at Assistant/Associate Professor or full Professor level.  On 26th February 1998 Mr. Deman responded to that advertisement, applying for a faculty position in economics and/or finance, although he did not specify for which level of post he was applying.  By letter dated 23rd March 1998 he was informed that he would not be short-listed.  Correspondence ensued in among other things Mr. Deman asked for information about any connection between the London Business School and QUB.  

26.	On 15th June 1998 Mr. Deman issued proceedings alleging that the failure to short-list him was on grounds of his race.  He named as respondent not only the School itself but also Prof. George Bain (now Sir George Bain), who had been the Vice-Principal of the School until December 1997 but had with effect from 1st January 1998 become Vice-Chancellor of QUB.  The School’s Grounds of Resistance and answers to the questionnaire gave detailed objective grounds why Mr. Deman was not qualified for any of the advertised posts – among them that he did not have a Ph. D., that his CV did not demonstrate a sufficiently strong teaching record and that he did not have a sufficient record of publication in academic journals of the highest standing.  It also made clear that neither Prof. Bain nor anyone associated with QUB had any part in the decision not to short-list him.

27.	A directions hearing was held on 14th October 1998, attended by Mr. Deman, at which the issues were clarified.  It transpired that he wished to complain not only of the failure to short-list him but of how the School, and Professor Bain, had dealt with earlier applications by him for academic positions.  A date was agreed for a three-day hearing to commence on 19th January 1999.

28.	On 19th January 1999, on the morning of the hearing, Mrs Deman sent a fax to the Employment Tribunal saying:

(a)	that Mr. Deman had on some unspecified date prior to 8th December 1998 notified the Tribunal that he would be abroad from that date until 11th January 1999 and had sought an adjournment on that basis;

(b)	that (for reasons which are unclear) he had not in fact returned from India until the previous night (at 3 a.m.); and 

(c)	that he had for some unspecified period “been suffering from upper respiratory infections and inflamed vocal chords” and that this had caused a deterioration of his condition so that he had “increased chest pains and loss of voice”.

On that basis she asked for an adjournment.  Mr Linden asks us to note that the terms of the application are characteristic of several other applications to adjourn which are encountered over the history of Mr. Deman’s litigation – that is to say a “belt-and-braces” approach whereby he invokes health grounds in support of an application which in fact is principally based on other grounds.  

29.	The Tribunal refused that application.  The Chairman (Mrs Hill) indicated that the Tribunal office could not trace any previous application for an adjournment; but she pointed out that even if such a letter had been received the fact that Mr. Deman had chosen to go abroad for a lengthy period, returning a week before the hearing, would not have been treated as a sufficient reason for vacating a date to which he had previously agreed.  She referred to the absence of medical evidence in support of what was said about Mr. Deman’s health and also to information given to the Tribunal by counsel for the School to the effect that “the Applicant has in previous Tribunal cases, particularly in Northern Ireland, sought to postpone hearings on the grounds of sudden ill health”.  Having refused the application to adjourn, the Tribunal proceeded to determine the claim in Mr. Deman’s absence.  As regards the claims relating to an earlier period sought to be introduced at the directions hearing in October, Mrs. Hill held that they were prima facie out of time and that no reason had been advanced why it was just and equitable to extend the time limit.  As to the originally pleaded claims in relation to the failure to short-list for any of the advertised posts, she held that on the face of the pleadings they had no likelihood of success and the appropriate course of action was to dismiss them.  The respondents sought their costs of the proceedings on the grounds that Mr. Deman had conducted the proceedings in a way that was frivolous, vexatious and unreasonable within the terms of rule 12 of 1993 Regulations.  As to this, the Tribunal said:

	“The Tribunal noted before it made its decision that there had been no contact with the Applicant since 6 November 1998, that the letter of 19 January 1999 was the first indication that the Applicant might be unwell, that the Respondents had sought to contact the Applicant for some time since November 1998 and had received no response, and that the Respondents had attended the Tribunal fully prepared to pursue the case, preparing bundles running to 900 pages.  The Tribunal considered the way in which the Applicant had conducted the proceedings to be frivolous, vexatious and unreasonable and therefore he could be liable to pay the Respondents’ costs of proceedings.  These costs are to be taxed on County Court Scale 2.”

30.	Mr. Deman applied to the Tribunal for a review of that decision.  Although the terms of the application, and any documents supplied with it, are not available to us, it appears that he was able to supply a copy of the letter – dated 1st December 1998 – in which he had sought an adjournment before going abroad.  He said that, not having had any reply to that letter before going abroad on 8th December, he assumed that the application had been granted.  Mrs. Hill refused the application for a review.  She pointed out that Mr. Deman’s decision to go abroad did not constitute an exceptional or unforeseen circumstance such that he might have expected an application for an adjournment to be granted.  It also appears from the review decision that the application made allegation of racial bias against the Tribunal. 

31.	Mr. Deman appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against both the dismissal of his claim and the order for costs.  There was a preliminary hearing before the Appeal Tribunal, chaired by Judge Pugsley, on 13th December 1999.  The occasion is noteworthy because it was the first occasion that Mr. Deman had the assistance of Mr. John Davies of counsel, under the ELAAS scheme: Mr. Davies has since appeared for Mr. Deman on several occasions, and it is clear that his assistance has always been welcomed by the Tribunal.  The Appeal Tribunal dismissed the appeal as regards the substantive decision.   Judge Pugsley commented, obviously correctly, that it was asking for trouble for Mr. Deman to go on holiday simply assuming that he had been granted an application for an adjournment which he had already been warned would only be available if he could show exceptional circumstances; and it appears that Mr Davies did not press this point at the hearing.  The Appeal Tribunal did however allow the appeal against the costs order to proceed to a full hearing.  That appeal was heard on 7th August 2002, before a Tribunal chaired by Judge Serota.  The appeal was allowed, essentially on the basis that the Employment Tribunal had failed to take into account the fact that the respondents themselves were in default of a number of procedural orders and that if Mr. Deman had in fact attended it would have been impossible for the hearing to have proceeded in any event: it will be noted that that reasoning does not impugn Mrs. Hill’s strictures on Mr. Deman’s conduct.  

32. 	In the meantime, Mr. Deman applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal against the dismissal of his appeal on the substantive claim.  An oral hearing was listed for 6th February 2001 before Mummery LJ.  On 10th January 2001 a letter was sent on the paper of I-AS saying that Mr. Deman “had returned from overseas but was sick” and that he wanted Mr Davies to appear for him but Mr Davies would not be available on the date fixed.  Mummery LJ refused that application on paper.  The deployment of arguments relating to Mr. Deman’s health in support of an application on, essentially, other grounds is another instance of the belt-and-braces approach referred to above.  

33.	There was no appearance on behalf of Mr. Deman on the listed date.  Mummery LJ refused permission to appeal.  Mr. Deman then applied to the Court of Appeal to reinstate the application for permission to appeal on the basis that the decision of Mummery LJ had been taken in his absence.  That application came before Sedley LJ on 30th March 2001 and was refused.  Mr. Deman then sought permission to appeal to the House of Lords, which was refused by Sedley LJ on 4th April 2001.  It appears from the judgment of Judge Serota in the Appeal Tribunal, although not from the judgments of Mummery LJ and Sedley LJ themselves, that in his applications for permission to appeal Mr. Deman had made various allegations against Judge Pugsley personally; but we do not have the details of these.

UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

34.	In February 1998 Mr. Deman applied to the University of Manchester (formally “the Victoria University of Manchester”) for the posts of Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in Finance.  He was not short-listed.  In June 1998 he brought proceedings in the Employment Tribunal alleging that the failure to short-list him was on racial grounds. (There were also claims for victimisation and breach of the Equal Treatment Directive, but these do not seem to have been pursued.)

35.	The University applied for a preliminary hearing in order to determine:

-	whether the claim was out of time (this point was subsequently abandoned by the University);

-	an application for the claim to be struck out as frivolous or vexatious;

-	an application for an order that Mr. Deman pay a deposit on the basis that his claim had no reasonable prospect of success.  

36.	That application for a preliminary hearing had an extremely troubled history.  It is fully documented in the papers and it is worth spelling out in some detail as an instance of the type of conduct on which the Attorney General relies: 

(1)	It was originally listed for 11th August 1998.  Mr. Deman applied for an adjournment.  The application was initially refused, but it was subsequently granted when he alleged that he would be attending another tribunal hearing on that date and also said that he was awaiting the results of an application to the CRE for funding in support of his claim: these too are leitmotivs of Mr. Deman’s applications.  (We have not been able to identify any other tribunal hearing on the date in question from the materials before us; but since these may not give a complete picture of Mr. Deman’s litigation activities it would be wrong for us to draw any conclusion from that.)

(2)	The re-fixed hearing on 11th September 1998 was adjourned at the request of the University.  

(3)	On the further re-fixed date of 30th September 1998 the University did not attend.  Since there was reason to believe that it had not received notice of the fresh date the Tribunal decided to order a further adjournment, to 11th November 1998.  In the Extended Reasons recording that decision the Chairman, Ms Donnelly, recorded that Mr. Deman refused to accept the decision of the Tribunal and behaved extremely disrespectfully towards it in the course of the hearing.  In particular, he (wrongly) accused the Chairman of reaching a decision without consulting the lay members; he made a point of addressing only the black member of the Tribunal and ignoring the Chairman and the other member; and he refused to stand when the Tribunal reassembled to give notice of the re-fixed date.  She described his behaviour as “extremely irate”.  

(4)	Mr. Deman appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the grant of the adjournment, alleging bias and misconduct on the part of the Chairman.  This was, of course, a futile appeal, since even if the decision had been wrongly taken it could not in practice be undone.  But the progress of the appeal was itself unsatisfactory.  It was listed for a hearing on 23rd June 1999.  That date was vacated on Mr. Deman’s application.  In allowing the adjournment the Registrar indicated that no further adjournment would be allowed.  It was re-listed for 28th September 1999.  On 18th September 1999 Mr. Deman applied for a further adjournment, enclosing a medical certificate from a General Practitioner stating that he should refrain from work for two weeks from 17th September 1999:  the reason given was “anxiety state”.  The Registrar refused the application.  When the appeal came on for hearing, before an Appeal Tribunal chaired by Judge Clark, Mr. Deman did not attend, although there was a further letter before the Tribunal renewing the application for an adjournment.  The Appeal Tribunal decided to proceed.  Part of its reason was that the certificate did not state that Mr. Deman was unfit to attend a hearing, as opposed to being unfit for work.  The appeal was dismissed.  The allegations of bias were explicitly rejected.  Mr. Deman applied for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal: this was refused. 

(5)	Mr. Deman applied for an adjournment of the re-fixed date of 11th November 1998 on the basis of sickness.  That application was granted.

(6)	Mr. Deman applied for an adjournment of the re-fixed date of 17th December 1998 on the basis that he was going to India for just over a month.  That application was granted.  

(7)	The application does not appear to have been re-listed until 10th January 2000.  It is not clear to us why this was, although it may be because the view was taken – whether or not correctly – that nothing should happen pending the disposal of the appeal to the Appeal Tribunal.  In any event, Mr. Deman applied to adjourn that date owing to sickness.  The application was not received until the morning of the hearing but it was granted.  

(8)	Mr. Deman applied to adjourn the re-fixed date of 25th February 2000 owing to sickness.  That application was granted.   

It will be seen that no fewer than eight hearings (six in the Employment Tribunal and two in Appeal Tribunal) were sought to be adjourned by Mr. Deman.  Of those eight applications, six were on grounds of claimed ill-health: this forms part of a clear pattern which we shall have to assess below.  In the only case where we have the observations of the Tribunal – namely those of Judge Clark in the Appeal Tribunal on 23rd September 1999 – the medical evidence was adjudged insufficient to support the application.  

37.	The preliminary hearing finally came on before a Tribunal chaired by Mr Beaumont on 3rd May 2000.  As noted above, the University had by this time abandoned its time point.  The Tribunal was not prepared to dismiss the claim at that stage as frivolous or vexatious.  

38.	In the meantime Mr. Deman had made further applications to the University for the post of Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in its School of Accounting and Finance and for the post of Lecturer in Development Economics and Macroeconomics.   He was not short-listed for either post.  On 4th May 2000 he brought further proceedings claiming racial discrimination against both the University and two individuals, namely Prof. Turley, the Head of the Department, and Prof. Stark, who was not a member of the University but was the external member of the short-listing panel for one of the posts and who Mr. Deman apparently considered was biased against him because of an association with QUB.  

39.	A directions hearing was ordered in both cases on 28th June 2001.  At that hearing Mr. Deman took the point that the respondents’ Notice of Appearance in the later proceedings had been served out of time and submitted that they should be debarred from defending the application.  That issue was adjourned to a hearing on 17th July 2001 before a Tribunal chaired by Mr Creed.  The decision of the Tribunal was to extend the time for submission of the Notice of Appearance.  We note from the Tribunal’s Reasons that Mr. Deman “challenged the constitution of the Tribunal panel”.  It is not clear on what basis the challenge was made, but it seems clear that it was unfounded.  

40.	Mr. Deman appealed against that decision to the Employment Appeal Tribunal.  We do not have the grounds of appeal in our papers, but it appears that they were based on – or in any event included – allegations of bias and improper conduct against the Tribunal.  On 1st October 2001, the Appeal Tribunal made an order that the appeal be dismissed unless within ten days Mr. Deman lodged an affidavit giving full particulars of allegations of bias or improper conduct.  Shortly afterwards the appeal was withdrawn.  It seems plain to us that there was no proper basis for the appeal in the first place. 

41.	There were further interlocutory hearings, including two conducted by Mr. Creed in September 2003 and January 2004.  We need not deal with the details, although the fact that they occurred is relevant to the subsequent story.

42.	The substantive hearing of both applications finally came on before a Tribunal sitting in Manchester chaired by Mr. Leahy.  Mr. Deman was unrepresented.  The hearing took 22 days (with another four days for deliberation in chambers), spread over three tranches, in March, April and October 2004.  The Reserved Judgment of the Tribunal is dated 14th December 2004.  All Mr. Deman’s claims were dismissed.  

43.	In the course of the hearing Mr. Deman conducted himself in a manner which led to very serious criticism by the Tribunal in its eventual judgment.  The Attorney General attaches considerable weight to this episode, and it is fully documented by a number of careful reasoned decisions dealing with the various incidents.  It is again necessary that we review it in detail.  We proceed chronologically:

(1)	On the first day of the hearing, 15th March 2004, Mr. Deman applied for the Tribunal to review Mr. Creed’s most recent interlocutory order, which related to disclosure from the University.  The application was refused.  

(2)	On 16th March 2004, the second day of the hearing, Mr. Deman applied for witness orders in relation to four witnesses – Dr. Qureshi, Mr. Titterington, Mr. McCue and his own wife, Mrs. Mayo-Deman.  He told the Tribunal that each of these witnesses had been prepared to attend voluntarily on the following day, i.e. March 17th, but that because the Tribunal was unable to sit on that day witness orders would be required in order to obtain their release from their employers on the substituted date.  The orders were granted.  The Tribunal had witness statements from all four witnesses.  It also had a witness statement from Mr. Graham and a draft witness statement in the name of Judge Prophet (as to this see para. 11 above); but Mr. Deman said at that stage that he did not require orders for these witnesses.

(3)	On 17th March 2004 the Tribunal received a fax from Dr. Qureshi asking to have the witness order against him set aside, on the basis that “I have nothing to do with the case, so far as I understand”.  He said that he had spoken to Mr. Deman and that Mr. Deman had agreed himself to ask for the order to be set aside on the basis that Dr. Qureshi had nothing relevant to say.  

(4)	On the morning of 18th March 2004 an order was duly made discharging the witness order against Dr. Qureshi.  The Tribunal wrote to him confirming that this had been done and attaching a copy of the draft witness statement.  On receipt of the letter and attached statement by fax, Dr Qureshi later the same day sent a fax back to the Tribunal saying:

“Please note that the statement purporting to be made by myself and faxed [by] you is not one which I made.  It is the first time I have seen it, and [it] is not signed by me.”

He also telephoned the Tribunal to confirm that he had never seen the statement, although he had spoken to Mr. Deman, and that the statement contained “inaccuracies”.  He also said that he had not been asked to attend the hearing on 17th March.  

(5)	At the commencement of the hearing on 19th March 2004, i.e. the fourth day of the hearing, Mr. Deman made a large number of applications.  These are as follows:

(a)	He asked for the witness order for Dr Qureshi to be re-instated.  He said that there was no longer any dispute between him and Dr Qureshi and he complained that the Tribunal should not have sent Qureshi a copy of what purported to be his statement.  The Tribunal refused to make such an order.  As the Chairman put it in the Extended Reasons dated 24th March 2004 (in which he dealt with all the applications made by Mr. Deman on this day):

“In the light of the history of the attendance of Dr Qureshi, what he has told the Tribunal and the applicant’s confirmation on the morning of 18th March that it was his intention in any event to apply for the witness order to be revoked, the Tribunal does not consider that it is an appropriate exercise of [its] discretion to issue a fresh witness order to Dr Qureshi or, as the applicant puts it, to reinstate the witness order.  If, as the applicant maintains, there is now no distance between himself and Dr Qureshi then there should be no difficulty arranging for Dr Qureshi’s attendance, if he is able to give evidence which is relevant to the proceedings before this Tribunal.  The Tribunal is confident that the university will do everything in its power to facilitate the attendance of Dr Qureshi, its employee.”

	That seems to us to have been an entirely appropriate response on the part of the Tribunal.  It was indeed expressed somewhat moderately in view of the double volte-face executed by Mr. Deman.  As Mr Linden bluntly put it in submissions, Mr. Deman was “messing the Tribunal about”.  As we shall shortly show, the Tribunal was less restrained in its final Judgment.  

(b)	Mr. Deman took the point that the Tribunal had not had the power to make witness orders in respect of Mr McCue and Mr Titterington since they were not in Great Britain but in Northern Ireland.  This was a surprising stance for him to adopt since he had expressly sought the making of these orders two days previously.  The Chairman in the Extended Reasons made it plain that the Tribunal had been prepared to make the orders, notwithstanding the absence of formal jurisdiction, precisely because Mr. Deman had stated that the witnesses were willing to attend and merely needed an order to satisfy their employers, and that since he now objected to the making of the orders the Tribunal was happy to discharge them; but that does not make Mr. Deman’s conduct any easier to explain.  In fact, it appears from the Tribunal’s eventual Judgment that Mr Titterington, like Dr Qureshi, had never expected to attend.  In that Judgment it said this:

“Put bluntly, on the second day of the hearing of this case, the claimant lied to this Tribunal.  The effect of his lie was to cause us to issue Witness Orders against witnesses who, we were given to believe, were going to give evidence in accordance with statements which had been provided by the claimant to the respondent… We were further expressly led to understand that four of those witnesses were ready to attend on the third day of this hearing but had had to make sudden rearrangements to their personal and business plans and commitments because the Tribunal were not able to sit on the third day.  Four witness statements were issued – for Mrs Mayo-Deman, Dr Qureshi, Mr James McCue and Mr Albert Titterington.  These last two witnesses were in Northern Ireland but we were told by the claimant that they required our witness orders merely in order to satisfy their employers and so that they could make themselves available.  Witness orders were issued in good faith and it became immediately apparent, from their reaction, that Dr Qureshi knew nothing of the case, had not made and disavowed the witness statement which had been tendered as his proposed evidence and that he had never been asked to attend and that Mr Titterington was not expecting to attend.”  

(c)	Mr. Deman, notwithstanding those points and the stance which he had adopted on 16th March, applied to the Tribunal for witness orders in relation to all his witnesses, i.e. including Mr. Graham and Judge Prophet.  The Tribunal – plainly correctly – observed that in all the circumstances the application now for a witness order for Judge Prophet was an abuse of the process.

(d)	Mr. Deman asked the Tribunal to make arrangements for its proceedings to be video recorded so that there could be no dispute as to what had been said and “because the Chairman is making his notes on a laptop and if the matter comes before the Employment Appeal Tribunal those notes are amendable”.  The application was made because of an incident the previous day in which the Chairman had rebuked Mr. Graham for interrupting the proceedings.  Mr. Deman criticised this as an interference with his right to take advice and said that it showed the necessity for having an independent record of what had occurred.  This application was refused by the Tribunal.  The refusal was plainly correct.  The reasons by which Mr. Deman sought to support his application were offensive.

(e)	Mr. Deman asked the Tribunal to review its refusal on the first day of the hearing to review the decision of Mr Creed – see (a) above.  There had been no change of circumstance which could have possibly justified such a renewed application and it was in our view plainly misconceived.  It was refused by the Tribunal.  

(6)	On 24th March 2004, being the sixth day of the hearing, when it became clear that the case could not be concluded within the time originally estimated there was a discussion about alternative dates.  The Tribunal eventually fixed five days in April.  In its Extended Reasons recording that decision the Tribunal described the unhelpful attitude taken by Mr. Deman to the process of fixing dates, and, specifically, his reluctance to accept any dates before June.  Although the episode is not significant in itself, it fits into the same pattern as Mr. Deman’s regular request for adjournments – that is, a surprising reluctance to see litigation in which he is involved come to a conclusion.  

(7)	Also on 24th March 2004 Mr. Deman applied to the Tribunal for an order that all the respondents’ witnesses should attend at 10 a.m. the following day, although there was no question of their actually being required at that time.  The application was in order, in effect, to protest against a previous observation of the Chairman which Mr. Deman regarded as having inconvenienced his own witnesses.  The application was described by the Tribunal as “mischievous” and was refused.   

(8)	On the following day, 25th March 2004, Mr. Deman told the Tribunal that he objected to it continuing to hear the case and that he proposed to raise a large number of matters by way of appeal.  He asked for the following day to be vacated so that he could take advice in relation to his proposed appeals.  The Tribunal refused that application.  In its Extended Reasons it set out its determination to hear the case to a conclusion and to judge it on its merits and continued:

“We are unanimously at a complete loss to understand the various ploys which have been used by the applicant, on a daily basis, to obstruct this course.  As counsel for the respondent has said, we have not, or have barely, had a full day of simply hearing evidence in the case.  The entire progress over its six days so far – and its seventh day is no exception – has been punctuated by points raised by the applicant, objections by him, applications made by him, criticism made by him to the Tribunal and at times, it must be said, provocations of the Tribunal by him.” 

(9)	It appears that on 7th April 2004 Mr. Deman lodged appeals with the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the first three interlocutory decisions identified above.  We do not have the grounds of appeal but Mr. Deman in a subsequent document described the grounds as being “errors of law, perversity and bias”.  When the second tranche of the Tribunal hearing resumed on 15th April 2004 (being the Thursday of Easter Week), Mr. Deman made a series of further applications.  These were:

(a)	to adjourn the hearing, the application being based on three separate grounds namely: (1) because he had difficulty making child-care arrangements for his daughter; (2) to await the outcome of the appeal referred to above; and (3) because of a commitment on his part to give evidence at a trial in the Camberwell Youth Court, commencing on 26th April;

(b)	for a review of the Tribunal’s decision on 15th March to refuse to review the earlier decision of Mr. Creed; 

(c)	for a review of the Tribunal’s revocation of its witness order of 16th March addressed to Dr. Qureshi and of its decision of the same date not to grant a witness order for Judge Prophet.

The Tribunal refused all three applications.  As regards the review applications, there had been no change of circumstance or other reasons justifying a review of the decisions already taken (and in one respect taken more than once).  There could in those circumstances be no conceivable ground for a review.  However, we should record what the Tribunal said in particular about the applications in relation to witness orders.  As regards Dr. Qureshi, having set out the previous history which we have already summarised, it said as follows:

“The Tribunal does not disavow one word of its previous Reasons.  It believes that the request for a witness order was in the circumstances an abuse of process and founded upon the Tribunal being misled.  The witness order was properly revoked, the applicant’s case is now closed, Dr Qureshi does indeed (from the information before the Tribunal) have nothing to say which is probative of any issue in this case and it would be improper to issue a witness order against him now.” 

The Tribunal set out the previous history relating to Judge Prophet’s purported witness statement, and then said this:

“To the applicant’s certain knowledge – because he has on more than one occasion referred to the correspondence which he had at the time with the previous Regional Chairman of this region, Mr Beaumont – Judge Prophet has strongly disavowed that witness statement.  It is not his and it is nothing short of scandalous in the view of this Tribunal that it was maintained to be his witness statement.  Even were the statement correct, it is, again, not probative of any of the issues before this Tribunal in this case; it contains nothing which bears upon the facts of these two complaints and the matters which have to be decided by this Tribunal in determining the applicant’s two complaints before us.  It is not relevant and it is nothing but potentially prejudicial.  The request for a witness order is again an abuse of the process of the Tribunals…”

We should also record that the Tribunal said this:

“On several occasions statements made on behalf of this Tribunal by its Chairman had been misconstrued by the applicant and fed back to the Tribunal incorrectly and inaccurately.  The Tribunal’s reasons given so far make plain what the true facts are.  We remain an impartial judicial body and we will not have our statements mis-recalled, misinterpreted or misrepresented.”

(10)	With regard to the application for an adjournment, the Tribunal was not prepared to give credence to Mr. Deman’s unsubstantiated allegations about difficulties with child-care, having regard to the fact that the hearing had been fixed for some time and the matter had only now been raised at the last minute: as the Tribunal pointed out, Mr. Deman had been able to attend throughout the first tranche of the hearing and was indeed present to argue matters on 15th April.  As for the requirement for Mr. Deman to give evidence in the Camberwell Youth Court, it was unclear whether this would in fact overlap with any part of the proposed hearing dates; but the Chairman said that he would write to the police and the clerk to the Court so as to ensure that if there were a difficulty it could be resolved so as to lose the minimum amount of hearing time.  As regards the appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, the Tribunal did not believe that that was a reason for not continuing with the hearing.  In particular, it did not believe that it was obliged to recuse itself because allegations of bias had been made.  In this connection it noted:

“We remain surprised at the strenuous effort made at times by the applicant to obstruct the normal course of a hearing of his complaints to the Tribunal.  We can find no good reason for it.  It is plain, not least from the “Amended Statement of the Applicant”, which was delivered to the respondent as part of the applicant’s bundle of witness statements in preparation for this hearing, that the applicant came here with some fixed view that he did not expect this Tribunal or any Employment Tribunal to be other than biased against him.  The statements of Messrs Titterington and McCue say the same thing.”

(11)	The Tribunal made the decision referred to in the previous sub-paragraph prior to the luncheon adjournment on 15th April 2004.  On the resumption of the hearing in the afternoon, Mr. Deman renewed his application to adjourn on the basis of a further e-mail from his wife relating to the problems with child-care arrangements.  The Tribunal agreed to adjourn for the rest of the day but insisted on the case restarting on 16th April.  It indicated that it was “far from persuaded as to the genuineness of the child-care reasons for an adjournment being sought”.

(12)	Mr. Deman forthwith lodged an appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the refusal of the Tribunal to grant an adjournment.  The grounds allege that the decision to refuse an adjournment was perverse and demonstrated bias on the part of the Tribunal.  The grounds are formulated in intemperate terms – for example, accusing the Tribunal of attempting to “sabotage” the proceedings in the Camberwell Youth Court, of having “its own agenda” and of retaliating against Mr. Deman because of “his refusal to surrender to Mr Leahy and his Tribunal’s tactics to drive him into submission”.

(13)	At the start of the hearing on 19th April 2004 the Tribunal received a telephone call to the effect that Mr. Deman was unwell and had been taken to hospital.  A friend attended and gave limited further information.  The Tribunal adjourned the case until the following day but indicated that it would need independent medical evidence before it was prepared to adjourn any further.  It made the following observations:

“(i)	The applicant knows that the Tribunal is concerned about the delays and interruptions that have prevented the respondent from presenting its case.

(ii)	This is the eleventh day of the hearing.  In the previous ten days the Tribunal has had to give no fewer than eight Decisions on interlocutory matters raised by the applicant.  

(iii)	In the time that the hearing has been running so far, the applicant has taken just over 20¼ hours in presenting his case and evidence.  Of that his own evidence (as oppose to that of his witnesses) took just short of 18 hours and the only interruptions to it were of the applicant’s making.  

(iv)	A further twelve hours and 16 minutes have been spent by the Tribunal in dealing with the applicant’s various applications, requests and interruptions.  

(v)	In contrast, in the four and a half days since the applicant’s case closed the respondent has been able to adduce oral evidence for no more than four hours and 45 minutes.  

This rate of progress is denying the respondent a fair hearing of its case and for this last reason alone the Tribunal requires the applicant to provide independent medical evidence of his incapacity today.”

(14)	The following day the Tribunal was supplied with a letter from Mr. Deman claiming to be suffering from “vertigo, dizziness and nausea and heartburn and pain” and a letter from an SHO at the Manchester Royal Infirmary saying “this gentleman attended A&E with medical problems.  I have advised him to rest and remain off work for the next few days (this included Tribunal work).”  The Tribunal adjourned the case until 28th April and directed that if Mr. Deman claimed to be unable to attend that hearing for medical reasons he should supply “a full medical report addressing the issue of his incapacity from attending a hearing”.  

(15)	In circumstances which are not entirely clear the hearing was eventually re-listed for 17th May 2004 – again, unless an application for an adjournment supported by a full medical report were made on or before 14th May 2004.  At 5.50 p.m. on 14th May Mr. Deman sent by fax a report and medical certificate from a Dr Saran.  The certificate described Mr. Deman as “unfit from Tribunal work for 3 weeks”.  The report referred to certain long-standing medical conditions affecting Mr. Deman and concluded:

“He has suffered with these conditions for a very long time and as such I am unable to say when he is able to attend to his affairs in general.”

The Tribunal reluctantly adjourned the case until the earliest available date after 1st September 2004.  But it required Mr. Deman to provide a further medical report which would: 

“…address the apparent inconsistency as to the prognosis and expressly address the question of how it should be that the applicant, in May, is considered unfit to prosecute his case at this stage when

•	he was perfectly fit to do so and did so vigorously in March and on 15/16 April;
•	in April he attended a four day hearing at Camberwell Youth Court
•	as late as 14 May he was seeking to have this case adjourned in part because he was committed to a three day hearing at the Croydon Employment Tribunal on 19, 20 & 21 May (the last half of this week)
•	in his correspondence with the Tribunal he makes frequent references to a multiplicity of other court appearances and litigation deadlines which he has to meet and shows all the signs of being fully able to continue to conduct widespread litigation in other matters.”

It is plain that the Tribunal was – with reason – highly sceptical of Mr. Deman’s claim that he was prevented by illness from continuing with the proceedings.

(16)	In the meantime, Mr. Deman’s appeals to the Employment Appeal Tribunal referred to at (8) and (9) above had been considered under the “sift” process.  Indeed, it appears that he had appealed against all or almost all of the other interlocutory decisions that we have referred to above, although we do not have the notices of appeal in relation to them: there appear in all to have been no fewer than ten appeals.  All ten were dismissed on the basis that they had no reasonable prospect of success.  Mr. Deman required a hearing under rule 3(10) of the Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules.  The hearing took place before Judge Ansell on 13th September 2004; he confirmed the decision of the Registrar.

(17)	Mr. Deman sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal against the order of Judge Ansell.  Brooke LJ refused permission on the basis that the notice of appeal was “wholly inadequate” and that the appeal as formulated was “totally without merit”.  Mr. Deman sought an oral hearing.  At the hearing a number of his applications in other matters were also listed.  Buxton LJ agreed with the observation of Brooke LJ.

(18)	The hearing before the Tribunal did not resume until 4th October 2004.  Before it did, on 20th September 2004 Mr. Deman applied to the Tribunal by letter asking for a witness order requiring the attendance of Mr Titterington, who remained resident in Northern Ireland.  By letter dated 20th September 2004 the Chairman rejected that application.  We need not set out his reasons in full because he subsequently accepted that they were partly based on a misunderstanding.  However, among the reasons was the point that – as Mr. Deman had already himself pointed out – the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to make a witness order against a person outside Great Britain.  The Chairman described the request as being, in those circumstances, vexatious.  Mr. Deman then applied for a review of that decision, which took place before the full Tribunal at the beginning of the resumed hearing on 4th October 2004.  The Tribunal correctly pointed out that no ground had been established for seeking a review of the decision; and the Chairman pointed out that for Mr. Deman not only to make the original request, but to pursue it by way of review, in the knowledge that the Tribunal had no power to make the order, was indeed an abuse of the process of the Tribunals.  As it turned out, Mr Titterington in fact attended voluntarily on 4th October 2004, so that the whole episode turned out to have been academic in any event.  

(19)	On 11th October 2004 Mr. Deman applied to the Tribunal to recuse itself on the basis that the Chairman was biased.  The immediate trigger for the application appears to have been an episode at the end of the previous week when the Chairman had intervened with the Employment Appeal Tribunal to obtain the postponement of four appeals brought by Mr. Deman in other cases (we are unable to identify which cases these were, but it does not matter) so that the progress of the hearing in the Manchester case should not be interrupted.  The Tribunal clerk had received a telephone message from the Appeal Tribunal to the effect that the Appeal Tribunal had agreed to postpone the appeals “due to the part-heard case in Manchester not, as Mr. Deman stated, his ill health”.  The Chairman read that note to the parties.  Mr. Deman contended that his doing so was evidence of bias against him.  However, his allegation of bias ranged much more widely. He relied, among other things, on the rejection of earlier interlocutory applications which had already been unsuccessfully appealed; as the Chairman observed, these aspects of the application “do not… deserve the time and energy of the Tribunal to address them at this stage”.  The Chairman continued:

“We have considered carefully all the other matters of which the Claimant has complained.  In particular, he objects to the Chairman questioning witnesses and suggest – as in each instance he did at the time, without hesitation – that the Chairman was prompting the witness or was leading the witness to give evidence which was supportive of the Respondent’s case.  We note at this instance that this Chairman has found it a rare event indeed to be able, as is otherwise normal in such proceedings, to ask the witness a question for the purpose of clarification without being the subject of a loud and aggressive objection by the Claimant followed by and incorporating an attack on the Chairman’s independence and impartiality.  In many instances questions have not been asked which would normally routinely be asked simply because it has been anticipated by the Chairman and his colleagues that it would serve only to provoke another outburst from the Claimant and that would further delay matters.

We refer to reasons given in our previous decisions, in which we have emphasised the need to progress with this case and to hear the evidence so that we can come to a decision based on the facts and the law in which we can have confidence on the basis that we have heard all the relevant evidence.  We refer also to our stated determination to proceed with this hearing not withstanding what has been at times a perplexing approach to the progress of this case on the part of the claimant.  Indeed there have been a significant number of occasions when it had seemed that the claimant’s main intent was to destroy the possibility of a fair hearing of this case and he has been more than once warned about his conduct in this regard.  We note also that, up to the resumption of this hearing on 4th October after a long break, the claimant in the presentation of his own case had consumed 20 hours and 7 minutes of our time.  The Respondent to that stage, in 4½ days had been able to produce its evidence for only a period of 9 hours and 35 minutes and the Tribunal and the Respondent’s time had been occupied by the claimant’s various interruptions, protest and applications for 12 hours and 46 minutes.  

At that stage we were in grave danger of reaching the point where the hearing would have to be abandoned on the basis that a fair hearing was being rendered impossible by the claimant’s conduct.  We did not, mercifully, have to take that step although the whole of last Monday morning was effectively wasted in the Claimant’s pursuit of a vexatious application for a review of the refusal by this Chairman of a Witness Order for a witness, Mr Titterington who, it appeared, was present through most of the morning in this very Tribunal.  We nevertheless proceeded with the case from Monday lunchtime and, as Counsel for the Respondent today has pointed out, we were successful and were for the first time throughout this hearing, in having 4½ days consecutively observed in hearing evidence.”  

The Tribunal proceeded to dismiss the application to recuse itself.  An appeal to the Appeal Tribunal against that decision has yet to be heard.

(20)	On 12th October 2004 the afternoon’s hearing had to be abandoned because of Mr. Deman’s “conduct and … outbursts”.

(21)	On 19th October 2004 the Tribunal imposed a guillotine.  The Tribunal observed that at that point Mr. Deman appeared to appreciate that “it was his time and not ours that was being wasted if there was further procrastination”, and the procrastination ceased.  Mr. Linden invites us to infer that Mr. Deman’s conduct throughout had in fact been deliberate and calculated.  That may be so, but the conclusion is not necessary to our reasoning.

Mr. Deman’s behaviour as set out above can only be described as vexatious, and – specifically – as involving multiple vexatious applications.

44.	The hearing eventually finished on 22nd November 2004.  The Reserved Judgment of the Tribunal was sent to the parties on 15th December 2004.  Each of Mr. Deman’s claims was dismissed.  Among other things, the Tribunal concluded:

(a)	that the quality of Mr. Deman’s CV, and in particular his history of recent research and publication, was such that he was unlikely to be a strong candidate for a post in a well-established university, and that his involvement in litigation had inevitably been a serious distraction from academic work;

(b)	that it was a serious hindrance to Mr. Deman that he did not have a Ph. D.;

(c)	that he was never a serious candidate for a Chair.

As regards the victimisation claim, the Tribunal rejected  Mr. Deman’s allegation that Prof. Turley and Prof. Stark were members of a “Northern Irish Catholic mafia”.

45.	At the end of its Judgment the Tribunal made some observations relevant to an anticipated costs application.  It referred to the numerous interlocutory decisions which we have summarised above.  It referred in particular to the episode referred to at para. 43 (2)-(5) above, in which it stated bluntly that Mr. Deman had lied to the Tribunal.  It continued:

“Since then, there have been innumerable further instances of deliberate misconstruction and misrepresentation by the Claimant of, in particular, the actions and words of this Tribunal and of its Chairman in particular.  The Claimant has vehemently and aggressively resisted any intervention by or ruling of our Chairman and has repeatedly unjustifiably accused him and the Tribunal of bias.  The Claimant has sought to permit of no other opinion than his own.  In the earlier part of the hearing, over the space of nine days the Claimant consumed more than sixteen hours in vexatious arguments and in criticism of the Tribunal.”  

It referred also to the fact that Mr. Graham had on several days staged a picket outside the Tribunal office displaying placards which were defamatory and offensive about the Chairman: as it observed, it was inconceivable that this would have taken place without Mr. Deman’s approval.  The Tribunal commented that this:

	“…was part of a highly disruptive approach by the Claimant to the conduct of this hearing and, as he was warned on more than two occasions, it brought this Tribunal to the very brink of considering whether or not his claim should be struck out.  His conduct was, indeed, scandalous and the only issue was whether or not his behaviour was such as to deprive the respondent and the Tribunal of the prospect of a fair hearing.”  

It concluded that Mr. Deman “has treated this Tribunal appallingly”.  

46.	As anticipated, the University made an application for costs.  In a Judgment sent to the parties on 14th June 2005 the Tribunal ordered Mr. Deman to pay the respondents’ costs in the sum of £8,000.  The Judgment rehearses the history which we have already summarised and we need not quote from it in any detail.  We should record, however, that the Tribunal stated expressly that it was not satisfied that the medical grounds on which it was persuaded to grant the adjournments in April and May had been bona fide.  It pointed out that it had asked for, but had never received, a medical report dealing specifically with various matters including, if his health was as bad as he claimed, “how it was that the Claimant was nevertheless able to attend to other business and to have previously pursued this case with the greatest of vigour”.  It referred to what he calls “the medical card” having been repeatedly played by Mr. Deman in order to seek to obtain postponements or adjournments.  It also ordered that the witness expenses paid for Mr McCue and Mr Titterington be repaid.

47.	Mr. Deman appealed against the substantive decision of the Employment Tribunal.  His appeal was lodged out of time.  The date originally fixed for the hearing of his application for an extension of time for appealing was adjourned at his request: we do not know the reasons but observe that the request for an adjournment fits into a pattern demonstrated both in this and other cases.  At the eventual hearing on 13th December 2005 an extension was refused and the appeal was dismissed.  

48.	Mr. Deman also in due course appealed against the costs decision of the Employment Tribunal.  As we understand it, that appeal has yet to be heard.  

UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD

Bradford 1

49.	In February 1999 the University of Bradford advertised a variety of academic posts in its Management Centre at Professor, Senior Lecturer and Lecturer level.  Mr. Deman responded to the advertisement applying for posts at all three levels.  As the Tribunal observed in its eventual Reasons, this was an unusual course and, on the evidence before it, unique: a person who genuinely considers himself of sufficient ability and standing to qualify for appointment as Professor was hardly likely to be interested in appointment as a Lecturer.  In the event, Mr. Deman was not short-listed for a Chair: he scored only 13 points on the relevant matrix, while other candidates scored as high as 66.  It is reasonable to conclude that his application in this regard was wholly unrealistic.  Candidates for posts as Senior Lecturer or Lecturer were considered as part of a combined process.  Mr. Deman was not short-listed for consideration as a Senior Lecturer.  The notes of the relevant panel observed:

“Very poor publications in recent past.  None since 1996.  Not good enough publication record for Senior Lecturer.  Accept for short-list for Lecturer.”

50.	Mr. Deman was accordingly invited for interview in connection with a Lecturer post.  His application was rejected on the grounds, as the Tribunal subsequently held, that his poor publication record since 1994 meant that he was unlikely to be able to contribute to the University’s Research Assessment Exercise (“RAE”) performance.  He was notified that he would not be offered a Lecturership.  

51.	On 8th July 1999 Mr. Deman presented an application to the Employment Tribunal alleging that the failures to short-list/appoint him to any of the posts in question was the result of racial discrimination, alternatively sex discrimination.  The respondents were the University and Prof. Alderson.  The hearing was originally listed for 26th-30th June 2000 but that hearing was postponed as a result of the initiation of the subsequently aborted s. 33 application (see para. 10 above).  The hearing did not in fact begin until 21st January 2002, before a Tribunal sitting at Leeds chaired by Mr Grazin.   Mr. Deman was represented by Mr Titterington.  As appears from the Reasons, there were a number of procedural complications in the course of the hearing which required rulings by the Tribunal.  These can be summarised as follows:

(1)	At the commencement of the hearing Mr. Titterington asked for an adjournment so that the CRE could reach a decision as to whether to afford Mr. Deman representation.  The application was refused, although consideration of it occupied most of the first day. 

(2)	Mr. Deman had previously brought proceedings in the County Court against the University arising out of its failure to award him a Ph.D. in 1997.  He alleged that that decision had been taken on racial grounds.  As noted above, the claim had been dismissed on 19th January 2000 when Mr. Deman failed to attend the hearing; and a subsequent attempt to have the claim reinstated was dismissed.  It appeared from Mr. Deman’s witness statement in the Tribunal that he wished to go in detail into the University’s alleged discrimination in relation to the non award of a Ph. D.  The Tribunal gave directions intended to ensure that that issue was ventilated only in so far as it was relevant.  

(3)	Mr. Deman, through Mr Titterington, made generalised allegations of what he described as “institutional racism”.  The Tribunal declined to entertain these.  
Mr. Deman put before the Tribunal a document headed “Bias and Institutionalised Racism: Employment Tribunal”.  The Tribunal did not read that material.

(4)	Most seriously, on the final day of evidence (Friday 26th January 2002) there was what the Tribunal described as “an unfortunate public difference of opinion between Mr. Titterington and [Mr. Deman], which included [Mr. Deman] standing and shouting in a very loud voice at Mr. Titterington”.  Mr Titterington sought, and obtained, the leave of the Tribunal to withdraw.  Mr. Deman then asked for an adjournment

“…on the basis that he required another representative to assist him, and further on the basis that he had a medical certificate, issued the previous day, to the effect that he was suffering from vertigo/depressive illness.  No mention had been made of that latter issue until Mr. Titterington withdrew.”

(This is thus a further instance of Mr. Deman seeking to bolster an adjournment based on other grounds by reference to health problems.)  The Tribunal refused that application.  As the Reasons then record, Mr. Deman walked out.  Although he was told before he left that he was entitled to submit written representations for the consideration of the Tribunal on the following Monday, when it would be considering its decision in chambers, he did not do so.  After the close of business on the Monday, a fax containing written submissions from Mr. Deman was in fact received; but the Tribunal which had already concluded its deliberations, declined to consider them.

52.	The Tribunal gave its decision on 8th March 2002. It dismissed all Mr. Deman’s claims.  As regards the claims of racial discrimination, it accepted that the University’s decisions were taken entirely on grounds unrelated to Mr. Deman’s race.  It considered carefully the question of Mr. Deman’s qualifications and found nothing surprising in the fact that he was not short-listed.  It commented on the fact that Mr. Deman had no record of recent research such as would be of interest to a research-based University such as Bradford.  As regards his application for a Chair, it noted that the CVs of those short-listed “were essentially and qualitatively different to those of the Applicant”.  As regards his application for a Lecturership, it found that he had performed poorly at interview and that “there were considerable areas of vagueness and uncertainty in his CV”.  There was in the end no evidence, beyond the fact that Mr. Deman had indeed not been short-listed/appointed, to support an inference that the decisions were taken in whole or in part on racial grounds.  As for the allegation of sex discrimination, the Tribunal felt able to deal with this shortly.  It was based entirely on the fact that one of the Lecturers who had been appointed was a woman.  The Tribunal pointed out that she had exactly what Mr. Deman was said to have lacked, namely a record of recent publications.  The Tribunal continued:

“[Mr. Deman’s] argument that there was sex discrimination ignores the fact that a total of four male persons were appointed as Lecturers at the same time as Ms Richardson and one other female person.  Accordingly, we have no hesitation in accepting [the] suggestion [of counsel for the University] that this particular complaint is entirely without merit.  For those reasons, it is simply rejected.”

The Tribunal was also able to be short in its rejection of the claim of race discrimination against Prof. Alderson in so far as this went beyond the claim based on the failure to short-list/ appoint Mr. Deman.  The claim in these respects was also described as having no merit. 

53.	Mr. Deman applied for a review of the decision of the Tribunal.  We do not have the terms of the application, but its gist can be identified from the Reasons given by the Chairman on 2nd April 2002 in support of his decision to refuse the application on the basis that it had no reasonable prospect of success.  It is clear to us that the application was wholly misconceived.

54.	Mr. Deman appealed.  Again, we do not have the Notice of Appeal, but it appears from the Judgment of Judge Burke to which we refer below that it:

“…consists of 15 pages and some 45 paragraphs of complaints of bias on the part of various Chairmen of the Employment Tribunal, including Mr. Grazin, and on a wider basis and makes many criticisms of the procedures adopted by the Tribunal which heard the complaints now the subject of this appeal.” 

The affidavits lodged in support of the appeal confirm the accuracy of the summary.  They include Mr. Deman’s own “Affidavit on Bias and Institutionalised Racism in the Tribunals” and affidavits from Mr. Graham and Mr. McCue.  These are lengthy and vituperative about the bias which Mr. Deman is said to have encountered before Mr. Grazin and other Chairmen.  Mr. McCue’s is also offensively racist in tone, alleging that one of the lay members – “who I believe was a Pakistani Islamic” – slept during the hearing, “presumably … dreaming of Jihad, missile launching and marching victorious into Indian Kashmir”, and claiming that Mr. Deman as a Hindu could not expect justice from a Pakistani Tribunal member.  Most of the grounds asserted by Mr. Deman were held at a preliminary hearing on 14th January 2003 to be unarguable; but he was permitted to proceed with a part of his grounds relating to bias.  That appeal was heard on 22nd May 2003 by an Appeal Tribunal chaired by Judge Burke and dismissed by a Reserved Judgment delivered on 15th August 2003.  

55.	Mr. Deman sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.  Permission was refused on paper by Pill LJ.  Mr. Deman renewed the application for permission orally on 19th February 2004 when he was represented by Mr Davies, but permission was again refused by Pill LJ and Thomas LJ.

Bradford 2

56.	In March 2000, i.e. while the previous proceedings were still pending, Mr. Deman applied to the University of Bradford for a Lecturership in Economics.  There was considerable confusion as to the outcome of that application, and it was not until 27th November 2001 that he was sent an e-mail definitively stating that he had not been short-listed, on the basis that he met only one out of the five notified “essential criteria” for the post.  The e-mail was sent by Mr Rice-Birchall, who was the solicitor at Eversheds handling the first proceedings on behalf of the University.

57.	At the beginning of 2002 Mr. Deman presented an application to the Employment Tribunal alleging racial discrimination on the part of the University in failing to short-list him for the post in question.  The respondents were (1) the University; (2) Mr Bunting, the Deputy Registrar; and (3) Mr Rice-Birchall.  The case was assigned to the Tribunal in Leeds.  A preliminary hearing was fixed for 27th May 2002 in order to determine various interlocutory matters.  On 5th May 2002 CEM wrote to the Tribunal asking that the case “should be transferred from the shadows of His Honour Judge Prophet to another jurisdiction preferably in Scotland”: see para. 10 above.  The Regional Chairman, Mr. Sneath, replied on 14th May 2002 that he had no power to transfer the case to Scotland and that the hearing would proceed.  By letter of the same date CEM asked that it should be adjourned.  That application too was refused.  Mr. Deman appealed to the Appeal Tribunal.  The appeal was decided by the President (Lindsay J) on 24th May 2002, i.e. on the Friday before the hearing: he gave his reasons in a Judgment which was sent to the parties on 28th May 2002.  We have no doubt that both the original application and the appeal were misconceived.

58.	The preliminary hearing fixed for 27th May 2002 accordingly proceeded before Mr. Grazin.  Mr. Deman was represented by Mr. Graham.  The following matters were determined:

(1)	Mr. Graham applied for the hearing to be postponed pending the “exhaustion” of the appeal to the Appeal Tribunal.  The application was plainly groundless.  The appeal had, as Mr. Deman knew, been dismissed: all that remained was to receive the written judgment of the Appeal Tribunal.

(2)	Mr. Deman renewed the application for a transfer to Scotland.  That application too was misconceived.  Quite apart from the merits, it had already been considered by the Regional Chairman and had been dismissed.  There was no change of circumstance, and the matter could only properly be taken further by appeal – as in fact had occurred.

(3)	Mr. Graham applied for a witness order to be made against HH Judge Prophet, on the basis that he might give evidence in the terms of the draft witness statement referred to at paragraph 11 above.  The application was dismissed on the basis that the evidence which it was sought to obtain from Judge Prophet could in any event have no bearing on the issues and proceedings.  That decision was plainly right, and the application was plainly misconceived.

  (4)	Mr. Graham applied for permission to tape-record the proceedings.  It is not clear from the Tribunal’s Reasons what justification was advanced for this application, but it is reasonable to infer that, as in other cases, it was based on Mr. Deman’s avowed suspicion that unless there were an authoritative record he would be treated unfairly.  If so, we are bound to say that we do not regard that as a proper ground: however, the Tribunal was prepared to accede to it and we say no more about it.

(5)	Mr. Rice-Birchall applied for the claim against him personally to be dismissed.  The Tribunal acceded to that application.  

(6)	The University applied for the claim against it and Mr. Bunting to be dismissed on the basis that it was out of time.  That application was refused.  

59.	Mr. Deman applied to the Tribunal for a review of that decision as regards the dismissal of the claim against Mr. Rice-Birchall.  Mr. Grazin refused that application on the basis that it had no reasonable prospect of success.  

60.	Mr. Deman then lodged an appeal to the Appeal Tribunal on the same point.  There were difficulties in listing the appeal (or, it may be, the preliminary hearing), apparently because Mr. Deman alleged that he was too ill to attend.  After some interlocutory activity of which we do not have the details, Judge Clark on 14th March 2003 required Mr. Deman to lodge within fourteen days a full medical report setting out the history of his condition and the prognosis, stating when he was expected to be fit to attend the appeal: failing the lodging of such a report the appeals would stand dismissed.  A copy of the report was to be sent to the respondents, who were to be given facilities for a medical examination of their own.  Mr. Deman failed to produce such a report, but by letter dated 24th March 2003 he appeared to say that he no longer wished to have the appeal adjourned on medical grounds.  The appeal was struck out for non compliance.  Mr. Deman sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.  By order dated 3rd July 2003 Maurice Kay LJ gave permission, while noting that he had “a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm” for the appeal since he doubted that the underlying issue was one which would have any real outcome on the substantive issues.  So far as we are aware, the appeal was not pursued further, with the result that the dismissal of the initial appeal by the Appeal Tribunal stands.

61.	On 22nd July 2002 Mr. Deman sought permission to amend his application in order to complain of discrimination in relation to a separate job application as long ago as November 2000.  Mr. Grazin refused permission on 1st August 2002.  Mr. Deman appealed to the Appeal Tribunal.  The Notice of Appeal rehearsed Mr. Deman’s general complaints against the alleged institutionalised bias in the Employment Tribunal system, and against Judge Prophet in particular.  It also made allegation of bias on racial grounds against Mr. Grazin personally.  These allegations were supported by a version of Mr. Deman’s standard affidavit on bias.  Mr. Deman sought, and was granted, permission to adduce supporting affidavit evidence from Mr. Graham and Mr McCue; but no such evidence was forthcoming.  At a hearing on 21st July 2003 before the President (Burton J) Mr. Deman, who had the benefit of counsel appearing under the ELAAS scheme, withdrew the allegations of bias against Mr. Grazin; and directions were given for the hearing of a full appeal on more limited grounds.  That appeal was heard before Judge Birtles on 5th November 2003.  By his Judgment sent to the parties on 13th January 2004 he dismissed the appeal.  

62.	In the meantime, the substantive case was listed for hearing before the Employment Tribunal, with an estimate of five days, on 9th December 2002.  Shortly before that date Mr. Deman applied for an adjournment.  We do not have the details of that application, but it was unsuccessful.  It appears that he appealed to the Appeal Tribunal; but his appeal was dismissed.  He renewed his application on the first day of the hearing.  The Tribunal was for that day only chaired by Mr Humphreys, who was not the chairman designated to hear the substantive hearing: the chairman originally designated had had to recuse himself, and his replacement was not available until the following day.  Three grounds were relied on by Mr. Deman in support of his application for adjournment.  We take them in turn:

-	First, Mr. Deman said that he had been intending to be represented by a Mr. Kumar (elsewhere described as the Co-ordinator of CEM), but that Mr. Kumar had told him on the 5th December that he would not represent him.  He produced a letter from Mr. Kumar saying that he had withdrawn because Mr. Deman would be unable to obtain a fair hearing.  The Tribunal observed:

“…[T]he withdrawal by Mr Kumar was not brought to the attention of the EAT and the first that the respondent were aware of this state of affairs was this morning.  We find the assertion by Mr Kumar to be incredible.”  

Mr. Deman told the Tribunal that he had been unable to obtain alternative representation.  He also said that he had applied to the CRE for assistance in November and that there was a good prospect that if there were an adjournment such assistance might be forthcoming.  The Tribunal rejected that argument on the basis of Mr. Deman’s delay in applying for assistance from the Commission.  

-	Secondly, Mr. Deman said that he was having difficulty in obtaining the evidence of expert witnesses.  The Tribunal rejected that ground on the basis that, in the case of one witness (Dr Tambyrajah), his attendance could be obtained by the service of a witness order; and, in the case of the other, Mr. Deman had been guilty of delay in attempting to obtain his evidence.  

-	Thirdly, Mr. Deman complained of problems caused by the state of the bundles.  The Tribunal rejected that argument on the basis that it had already been dealt with by the Appeal Tribunal in the appeal the previous week.

Having dealt with those grounds in turn, the Tribunal observed:

“This matter was listed for hearing in June at a directions hearing.  Since then the applicant has applied on four occasions for it to be adjourned on different and changing grounds.”  

It concluded that the balance of justice favoured the claim proceeding.  

63.	The hearing that commenced on the following day, before a Tribunal chaired by Mr. Brown, had a chequered progress.  The first three days of the hearing were on 10th, 11th and 13th December 2002.  The evidence was then heard in two further tranches, between 9th and 13th June 2003 and 17th & 21st December 2003.  It lasted in all some seventeen days.  The decision was eventually sent to the parties on 25th February 2004. We are unaware why the hearing had to be spread over so long a period.  However we should note two points:

(1)	The Tribunal in its Reasons alluded to the fact that Mr. Deman had made “a number of applications for adjournments”, generally between the sitting periods: it refers to its responses having been “documented separately” but we have not been supplied with copies.  It would be unfair, therefore, to draw any strong inference to the effect that the delays were the fault of Mr. Deman, but the Tribunal’s reference to numerous applications for adjournments does nevertheless evoke strong echoes from his conduct of the other proceedings with which we deal with in this judgment. 

(2)	The Tribunal recorded that a substantial part of Mr. Deman’s evidence related to the University’s failure to award him a Ph. D.  This was, to say the least, of doubtful relevance and had already been covered, to the extent relevant, by the evidence in Bradford 1.  The Tribunal sought to restrict Mr. Deman’s cross-examination on this issue to twenty minutes, but in the event he took one-and-a-half hours.

64.	The Tribunal dismissed Mr. Deman’s claims in their entirety.  We need not set out the reasoning in full, but we note the following points:

(1)	The Tribunal plainly had no difficulty in rejecting the case based on primary discrimination.  There was in truth no real evidence to support an inference of discrimination or to suggest that the decision was taken otherwise than on the merits. Again, the Tribunal made the point that Mr. Deman’s application was weakened by his absence of recent teaching experience and recent publications and research.  So far as the victimisation claim is concerned, the University was of course aware that Mr. Deman had brought previous claims against the University – and indeed Mr. Deman had referred to them in his application – but the Tribunal accepted the University’s case that this played no part in the decision.   

(2)	Mr. Deman made, by way of supposed “background”, a number of personal allegations (involving abusive telephone calls to his wife, and alleged racial and sexual harassment of another colleague) against one of the University’s witnesses, Dr. Cameron (who had been the internal examiner for his Ph. D. thesis), which were based on very flimsy evidence and which the Tribunal rejected.  

(3)	The Tribunal, having perforce heard considerable evidence about the University’s decision not to award Mr. Deman a Ph. D., had “no hesitation” in finding that it was not racially motivated.

(4)	There appeared to be no basis whatever for the claim against Mr. Bunting.

(5)	Mr. Deman had called as an expert witness a Dr. Tambyrajah.  The Tribunal pointed out that Dr Tambyrajah did not have the necessary expertise in the field of economics to express a view of the merits of the candidates who had been preferred to Mr. Deman and that he had not himself carried out any independent review of the facts but had relied on what he was told by Mr. Deman.  More significantly, however, the Tribunal made an express finding that the bulk of the evidence provided by Dr Tambyrajah had in fact been drafted by Mr. Deman and that Mr. Deman had not told the truth when he said in evidence that it was he who had borrowed his drafting from Dr Tambyrajah rather than vice versa.  Mr. Deman had also submitted a report in writing from a Dr. Hanchate, which the Tribunal found of no real assistance.

65.	Mr. Deman appealed to the Appeal Tribunal.  His Grounds of Appeal dated 4th April 2004 run to some 44 paragraphs.  Much of the content of the Grounds cannot on any view be regarded as raising any issue of law, and the language is intemperate.  Mr. Deman repeated his contention that “there has been a general bias of the Tribunals including some chairman of the ET and the EAT against the appellant, and the decision of the ET has been tainted and infected by institutionalised bias”.  The appeal was dismissed at a preliminary hearing of the Appeal Tribunal, presided over by Judge Ansell, on 1st September 2005.  

Bradford 3

66.	In October 2003 Mr. Deman made a further application for a Lecturership in Economics at the University of Bradford.  He was not short-listed.  On 15th March 2004 he presented an application to the Employment Tribunal alleging racial discrimination.  The only document that we have in relation to this application is the Judgment of an Employment Tribunal chaired by Mrs Lee sitting at Leeds, sent to the parties on 6th April 2005, in which it is decided that the claims were submitted out of time.  However, some matters about the interlocutory history appear from the Judgment, as follows.

(1)	Mr. Deman had apparently made a number of applications for adjournments.  We summarise the conclusions of the Tribunal in relation to these applications as follows:

(a)	Mr. Deman apparently complained of problems that had been caused by the late exchange of documents and witness statements.  As to this, the Tribunal said:

“We were satisfied that the difficulty… related to the Claimant insisting that the whole of the bundle of documents relating to a previous hearing between the parties should be included in this bundle.  Quite apart from the Claimant’s extensive experience before these Tribunals, there had been lengthy directions appointment when such matters had been discussed.  His insistence that the whole of the previous bundle should be included in our bundle was unreasonable.  It became clear the Claimant had in fact received the Respondents’ set of documents at least two weeks prior to the commencement of our hearing, whereas the Respondents had not seen the Claimant’s bundle or witness statements until the morning of the hearing.”

(b)	Another ground, or grounds, for Mr. Deman seeking an adjournment was his involvement in a number of other proceedings.  The Tribunal held that these did not justify an adjournment of the instant proceedings, which had been listed for some time.  Mr. Deman knew of the timetable and should have been able to work around it. 

(c)	Mr. Deman, as in other proceedings to which we have already referred, sought to support his application for an adjournment on other grounds by reference to problems with his health.  The Tribunal recorded that he submitted four separate medical reports from the previous year which described him as then suffering from “severe depression and anxiety”, although the most recent also described him as being physically fit to attend a hearing.  The Tribunal pointed out:

“In this case, the Claimant is far more experienced than one would normally expect the litigant in person to be and he has produced no recent medical evidence to support his application.”  

(d)	Mr. Deman also relied on the fact that he was, as he said, awaiting the outcome of an application for assistance from the CRE.  The Tribunal pointed out that since the claim was over a year old, and Mr. Deman had not specified the date at which he had made the application, this was not an adequate reason for an adjournment.

(e)	Mr. Deman advanced as a further reason for an adjournment his belief that any Tribunal sitting in Leeds was likely to be biased.  The Tribunal pointed out that it was approaching the matter with an open mind and said – sensibly – that the less that it heard about allegations about bias against other Tribunals, in Leeds or elsewhere, the more likely it was that it would be able to remain focussed on the issues and evidence in the case.  In this connection, the Tribunal recorded that Mr. Deman said that it was possible that one of the lay members, a Mr Ali, was biased and asked for information about his racial origins, nationality and religious beliefs.  These the Tribunal – plainly rightly – refused to give. 

(f)	It also appears from a reference in this part of the Judgment that there had been earlier applications to adjourn the proceedings which had been unsuccessful and that Mr. Deman had appealed, also unsuccessfully, to the Appeal Tribunal against the refusal to adjourn.

(2)	Mr. Deman sought witness orders in respect of three named witnesses.  He submitted what purported to be draft witness statements for the witnesses in question; but the Tribunal pointed out that it had no evidence that any of the witnesses was in fact aware of the draft statements or supported their contents.  The matters covered by the statements did not appear to the Tribunal to be likely to be of any real assistance to it in the determination of the issues before it.  The applications were accordingly refused.

67.	As regards the hearing itself, the following points emerge from the Judgment:

(1)	Mr. Deman asked the Tribunal to consider “a large number of additional documents, running to several hundred pages, and a bundle concerning alleged “institutionalised bias” by Tribunals and the Judiciary generally”.  Having refused all those applications, the Tribunal reminded Mr. Deman that “the more time spent on peripheral and preliminary issues the less time there would be to hear what we consider to be crucial evidence as to the reason for the Respondent’s failure to select him”.  His response was to seek a further adjournment in order that he could obtain legal advice on the legality and fairness of the decisions up to that point.  That application was refused.  

(2)	At the start of the second day, Mr. Deman asked the Tribunal to disclose whether any member of the Tribunal or any of their children or relatives had had any connection with the University of Bradford or had studied there or had any connection with the Labour Party or were members of the Labour Party and whether any lay member had sat in the past with any Chairman in the region and whether Mr Ali was from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh.  That application was refused.  Mr. Deman was warned that if he conducted the proceedings in an unreasonable fashion it might lead to an order for costs or for a striking out of the proceedings.  

(3)	It appears that Mr. Deman appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the various decisions made by the Tribunal on the first and second days of the hearing as summarised above; and on the fourth day of the hearing he made a further application to adjourn pending the outcome of that appeal.  We do not have any documents relating to the appeal; but it is in the highest degree unlikely that it was successful, and indeed it appears to us that there were no conceivable grounds for it.  The Tribunal refused the application and also rejected numerous other grounds advanced on the same day in support of an application for an adjournment.  We need not set out the details of those grounds.  It is sufficient to say that in our view the Tribunal plainly acted reasonably in rejecting them. 

(4)	It is apparent that Mr. Deman tried to use the hearing to re-visit issues which had already been considered and decided in Bradford 2.  The Tribunal observes that:

“Once evidence commenced, it became plain that Mr. Deman wished to spend much of the time allotted for cross examination on events which occurred in 1999 and which were considered by the Brown Tribunal.  It became clear that continuing to debate with Mr. Deman the relevance of those issues was not having any effect on his view of their relevance and was itself utilising time which should properly be used to consider relevant evidence.  The Chairman therefore explained that if Mr. Deman had been told of the issues and the evidence the Tribunal considered it wished and needed to hear to determine this case fairly, the Claimant should use the time allocated to him in the manner he saw fit and there would not be a further challenge or debate on the relevance of his cross examination.  It is a matter of some considerable regret to us that the Claimant wasted so much time in unnecessary argument and irrelevant arguments, which restricted the amount of relevant evidence which emerged from cross examination…” 

(5)	Because of the delays which had taken place during the hearing it was necessary for submissions to be given in writing.  Mr. Deman did not meet the deadline imposed by the Tribunal for the lodging of written submissions.  In the event the Tribunal was prepared, in the interest of justice, to consider Mr. Deman’s submissions, albeit received late.  It appears however that the Tribunal did not believe that in the correspondence surrounding this issue Mr. Deman had been truthful either about the date in which he had sent the submissions or about whether he had received the University’s submissions on time.  (There was an added complication because Mr. Deman’s submissions in reply were accidentally not brought to the Tribunal’s attention.  However, they were considered at a subsequent review.)

(6)	The Tribunal also noticed a degree of racism in Mr. Deman’s comment on the appointment of two Chinese lecturers that “they cannot speak properly”; and observed that this called in question the genuineness of his commitment to equal opportunities.

68.	Although the decision of the Tribunal was based principally on the time issue, it also considered the substantive merits.  As to that:

(1)	So far as primary discrimination is concerned, it concluded:

“There is no evidence to suggest that the Claimant’s race, ethnicity, nationality or colour may have affected his non-selection…  [S]ince there are no facts found from which we could conclude that colour or nationality played a part, there is nothing for the Respondents to explain or for us to draw inferences from.” 

It did not accept that Mr. Deman’s CV was manifestly the best of those submitted.  It drew attention to the fact that the CV: 

“…did not establish a recent history in teaching Economics at that level, or indeed that he had been in academia for the last few years, but in fact left a gap as to what sort of consultancy work he had been occupied with over that period of time.”

(It also referred to the fact that Mr. Deman had given evidence that he had not in fact engaged in consultancy work because he had been too ill.)

(2)	The Tribunal accepted that the question of victimisation was more difficult.  This was not surprising since the University was inevitably aware of the previous claims brought by Mr. Deman.  But it concluded that Mr. Deman had not established that that knowledge influenced the University’s decision.  It pointed out:

“The Claimant’s argument on victimisation amounts to the suggestion that he was so well known and notorious within this University Department, and also within the academic community at large in the UK, for having brought race discrimination claims, that it must be inevitable that anyone at all undertaking a selection exercise must hold that reputation against him.  If that were the case, it would not be possible for any Economics Department within any University (and particularly this one) ever successfully to defend such a claim by the Claimant.  That cannot be right.” 
 
We endorse the good sense of that observation.

(3)	The Tribunal found that it was in fact highly unlikely that Mr. Deman would have accepted an offer of a post at the University 

“…given his belief that Professor Cameron has blighted his academic career [sc. by denying him a Ph. D.] and was racially abusive to his wife and given also the Claimant’s evidence that he is compelled to challenge racism whenever he considers that it has occurred.”

That conclusion strongly suggests that it was in fact the Tribunal’s view that Mr. Deman had made the application for a job, and brought the subsequent proceedings, not so much in order to obtain employment but to seek to renew his thus far unsuccessful campaign against the University, originating in the refusal of a Ph. D.  That is in our view a legitimate inference.  In some cases it would be dangerous to doubt the genuineness of a “repeat application” by a person who has been, or even believes himself to have been, the victim of discrimination on the basis that the applicant cannot have wished to work with discriminators: that could undermine the effectiveness of the provisions against victimisation.  But the legitimacy of the inference depends on the facts of the particular case.

(4)	The Tribunal remarked on Mr. Deman’s tendency to believe that those undertaking a short-listing exercise were principally concerned with doing him down – that everything revolved around his application.  This was in the context of a suggestion, which it rejected, that another Indian candidate had been short-listed merely as window-dressing and to avoid a claim from him.

69.	Mr. Deman appealed.  All the grounds save one were dismissed at a rule 3 (10) hearing.  The remaining ground concerned the problem referred to in para. 67 (5) above caused by the overlooking of Mr. Deman’s reply submissions.  The appeal on that issue proceeded to a full hearing but was dismissed.

Bradford 4

70.	In February 2005 Mr. Deman applied for further posts at the University.  He was not selected, and on 25th June 2005 he presented a further application to the Employment Tribunal alleging racial discrimination.  On this occasion the respondents were the University and Dr. (now Prof.) Cameron.  

71.	At a case management discussion on 8th September 2005 a timetable was fixed including a hearing date commencing on 18th January 2006: this was fixed so as to avoid a trip which Mr. Deman was making to India.  Witness statements were to be exchanged on 25th November 2005.

72.	On 24th November 2005 CEM wrote on Mr. Deman’s behalf asking for an extension of time, an adjournment and for the case to be moved to a different Tribunal.  We do not have the letter itself, but it appears that CEM relied on:

(a)	an allegation that the Leeds Tribunal was implicated in procuring an official investigation (with police involvement) of alleged false expenses claims made by Mr. Deman (the details of this matter do not concern us); 

(b)	Mr. Deman’s outstanding complaints against a number of Tribunal Chairmen;

(c)	an injury which Mr. Deman had sustained to his hand, which would prevent him typing a witness statement.

A subsequent letter enclosed a medical certificate in relation to the hand injury and two letters from psychiatrists stating that Mr. Deman was suffering from depression – but these both dated from November 2004.  CEM’s letter also referred to Mr. Deman visiting India “due to bereavement in the family”.  Considerable further correspondence ensued, into which we need not go; but in due course the Regional Chairman directed that the hearing be vacated but that there should be a pre-hearing review on 18th January 2006 in order to determine whether by reason of his unreasonable conduct either Mr. Deman’s claim should be struck out or he should be ordered to pay costs.  Mr. Deman was ordered (a) to produce evidence to corroborate the assertion that he had suffered a bereavement and (b) to call a medical expert to confirm his assertion that he had suffered a hand injury which rendered it difficult or impossible for him to prepare his case.    

73.	The pre-hearing review proceeded before Mr. Hildebrand in Leeds on 18th January 2006.  Mr. Deman did not attend but he was represented by Mr. Graham.  A witness statement from Mr. Deman was served the previous day.  At the start of the pre-hearing review Mr. Graham applied for Mr. Hildebrand to recuse himself on two distinct bases: 

(a)	the alleged involvement of the Leeds Tribunal in the false expenses claim investigation referred to above; 

(b)	that Mr. Deman had made allegations of bias against Mr. Hildebrand in an appeal in other proceedings (those against Leeds Metropolitan University – see paras. 110 ff. below) and had complained about him to the Lord Chancellor and/or the Attorney General.

Mr. Hildebrand refused that application.  

74.	Mr. Graham then applied for an adjournment on the basis that Mr. Deman could not be present: he had just returned from a visit to India and was not well.  He relied on a bundle of documents lodged the previous day comprising (a) medical certificates (from doctors in both England and India) evidencing an injury to his left hand; (b) a medical certificate (likewise from both English and Indian doctors) stating that Mr. Deman was suffering from “acute wheezing bronchitis”; and (c) other documents apparently relating to the bereavement or other family troubles, though their precise import was obscure.  There appears also to have been a letter from CEM dated 11th January 2006 referring to “anxiety, depression and vertigo” and claiming that Mr. Deman was “sick with bacterial viral infection”, was on antibiotics and had been advised complete rest.  Mr. Hildebrand said:

“What is one to make of all this confused and contradictory medical information ?  There is no reference in the medical reports written while Mr. Deman was in India of a bacterial viral infection and treatment with antibiotics.  Although there is reference to anxiety, depression and vertigo in the [CEM] letter, there is no medical evidence to suggest any psychiatric component to the Claimant’s difficulties.  It appears to be safe to say in this case that the Claimant has produced material referring to injuries to his hand; anxiety and depression; bacterial, viral infection; wheezing and spastic bronchitis.  He has been able, in a period immediately prior to his Tribunal appointment, to travel from India to the UK and to produce a lengthy witness statement.  I am forced to the conclusion that the Claimant has been aware of the obligation to produce satisfactory medical evidence at this hearing, to be cross-examined by the Respondent.  The Claimant has failed to produce that evidence, and has failed to produce consistent and substantial evidence of an incapacity which would be sufficient to justify an adjournment of the Pre-Hearing Review.”

The application was refused.

75.	Mr. Hildebrand then proceeded to consider the substantive issues.  CEM had said that Mr. Graham was authorised only to deal with the preliminary applications but he did in fact make some submissions on these issues.  After reviewing the whole history of the matter, and drawing attention to a number of discrepancies in the material provided by Mr. Deman, Mr. Hildebrand said: 

“The Claimant would have been aware from the terms of the Regional Chairman’s Order … that he faced a serious question regarding the veracity of the information supplied to the Tribunal.  The Regional Chairman, faced with the irreconcilable claims of the Claimant to a postponement and the Respondent to avoid unnecessary expenditure of costs, granted the postponement on condition that the Claimant, on 18 January, provide the requested oral testimony regarding his medical condition, including the report of an expert medical practitioner.  The Claimant did not attend, and did not provide the medical evidence requested.  My conclusion is that the Claimant obtained the adjournment of the substantive hearing on the basis of unsubstantiated information.  I conclude that the Claimant set out to mislead the Tribunal.  He then provided the Tribunal with material regarding his medical difficulties in order to procure an adjournment which, upon critical analysis, is unjustified by the material provided.  The Claimant was ordered to attend with a medical practitioner to be cross-examined by the Respondent.  However, he chose not to take that step and subject himself to the cross-examination of the Respondent.  I am left with the conclusion that the correct conclusion is that the medical documentation supplied is incapable of substantiation and the Claimant misled the Tribunal by his action in obtaining an adjournment.”

Mr. Hildebrand was also critical of the material supplied regarding the alleged bereavement.  He decided that the appropriate sanction for Mr. Deman’s conduct was for the claim to be struck out.  He ordered that Mr. Deman pay the respondents’ costs of the proceedings, to be assessed if not agreed.

Overview of Bradford litigation

76.	It seems to us reasonable to infer from the foregoing that Mr. Deman’s persistent and prolonged litigation against the University of Bradford was largely if not wholly motivated by his desire to re-litigate the issue of the refusal of his Ph. D. – which he had not been able to pursue in the County Court – and to punish Dr. Cameron.

UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH

Claims arising out of Mr. Deman’s employment

77.	As noted in para. 2 above, Mr. Deman was employed between December 1997 and his dismissal in November 1999 as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich.  (It is perhaps worth noting that the Tribunal in Bradford 4 observed that the University of Greenwich was a teaching-led rather than a research-based institution.)  He brought five sets of proceedings against the University arising out of his dismissal and the sequence of events from mid-1999 which preceded it, which he said involved racial discrimination by a number of individual employees at the University.  The procedural history is complicated, but it is sufficient to say that all five claims were consolidated and were heard by an Employment Tribunal chaired by Prof. Rideout sitting at Ashford over twenty days between 23rd March and 25th October 2002.  Mr. Deman was represented throughout by Mr Davies.  The respondents in the consolidated proceedings consisted of the University and five individuals.  

78.	The Tribunal held that Mr. Deman had been unfairly dismissed on procedural grounds.  But it also held that he was guilty of the misconduct which had led to his dismissal – namely misrepresentations made at the time of his recruitment as to his previous employment and as to the amount of his earnings at the University of Pittsburgh.  The Tribunal held that that misconduct would have justified a decision to dismiss Mr. Deman summarily.  As regards his claims of racial discrimination, the Tribunal was satisfied that one of his colleagues had made a racially offensive remark to him and that the Registrar of the University had taken steps against him by reason of the fact that he had made his claims and was accordingly guilty of victimisation.  The remaining claims of racial discrimination were all dismissed.  The total amount awarded to Mr. Deman was £41,783.88.

79.	These proceedings are of limited importance for the purpose of the application before us.  Mr. Deman’s principal success was in relation to unfair dismissal, and the two other respects in which he succeeded both concerned particular individual acts of discrimination and are in no way analogous to the claims of discrimination which are the subject matter of most of the proceedings with which we are concerned.  We also note that the Tribunal was plainly unimpressed by the propensity shown by Mr. Deman to allege that every act, or alleged act, taken against him by any of his colleagues constituted racial discrimination.  After noting that in his witness statement Mr. Deman identified some 74 incidents of alleged racial discrimination, on all of which the Tribunal was required to make findings, it said this:

“In all cases, racial discrimination is claimed to be direct.  Most, but not quite all, of these claims rest upon inference, and in view of that, we feel that it is necessary at this early stage to point out as a fact the readiness of the Applicant to draw such an inference.  It appears to the Tribunal that in respect of all the incidents within its jurisdiction and most of the background incidents, the Applicant is ready to infer racial discrimination whenever the incident appears to him to be prejudicial to him … This desire to draw an inference of racial discrimination from every prejudicial act has not made the Tribunal’s task of drawing inferences any easier … We should also draw attention to the fact that the Applicant’s account of complaints is frequently lacking in specific detail.  It was characteristic of his evidence in chief that he rarely identified individuals.  Most of the details of his complaints was actually derived in cross-examination and almost all references to people by name derived from his response to that cross-examination.  It is also to be observed that there is little, if any, reference to comparative treatment of others.  This is because the Applicant very seldom drew such comparisons.  Almost all his complaints are made on the assumption that he has been singled out for detrimental treatment and that it followed, therefore, that others would not be subject to the treatment complained of.  There is some indication that the Applicant considered it sufficient that identification of the detriment be established and inevitable indicator of discrimination.”  

It is also material to note that the Tribunal explicitly stated that Mr. Deman had on occasions told lies.

Subsequent claim 

80.	On 20th April 2003 Mr. Deman applied to the University of Greenwich for the post of Professor in Finance/Accounting.  On 9th May 2003 the University responded, telling him that the post had been withdrawn due to financial constraints.  On 20th September 2005 Mr. Deman applied for a post as Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in Finance and/or Banking and Financial Services.  By letter dated 29th September 2005 Prof. Wills, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor with responsibility for personnel, wrote to him saying that in view of the fact that he had been dismissed for gross misconduct his application would not be considered.  CEM then wrote to Baroness Blackstone, the Vice-Chancellor of the University, who replied that she had nothing to add.

81.	On 12th December 2005 Mr. Deman commenced proceedings in the Employment Tribunal complaining of racial discrimination.  Both the 2003 and 2005 applications are referred to, but it is not clear whether the University is said to have acted unlawfully in relation to the first.  In addition to the University, Lady Blackstone, Prof. Wills and two other University employees are named as respondents.  Lady Blackstone is described in the ET1 as “a high-ranking Labour Party person who has nothing to fear as she has close associates sitting on the panels at the Tribunals and in EAT”: she is said to be aware of Mr. Deman’s litigation against Mr. Triesman, the former General Secretary of the AUT (as to this see paras. 143 ff.). 

82.	The Respondents’ Notice of Appearance foreshadows an application to strike the claim out, but we are unaware of any further substantive developments in the proceedings.  (There has been some aggressive and unhelpful correspondence from CEM, but we need not address that here.)

GLASGOW CALEDONIAN UNIVERSITY

83.	On 29th December 1999 and 4th May 2000 Mr. Deman started separate  proceedings against Glasgow Caledonian University (and, in the second case, Prof. Taylor) alleging racial discrimination in his non-appointment to, respectively, posts as Reader/Senior Lecturer in the Department of Risk and Financial Services and Senior Lecturer in Finance and Accounting.  The applications were conjoined and have had a complicated interlocutory history (involving no fewer than eight hearings), but for reasons which are unclear they have never reached a hearing.  We note the following points:

(1)	The University’s Notice of Appearance in the first proceedings alleged that Mr. Deman had performed particularly poorly at interview. 

(2)	Mr. Deman made two applications to dismiss the respondents’ Notices of Appearance and have them debarred from defending because of perceived procedural defaults.  Both applications were refused, in terms which strongly suggest that they had no merit.  

(3)	Dates fixed for the substantive hearing were postponed at least twice, in March and October 2003, at Mr. Deman’s request.  He gave the usual multiplicity of reasons familiar from other cases – clashes with other hearings, alleged witness difficulties, difficulties in obtaining representation (including alleged outstanding applications to the CRE) and ill-health (his own depression and his wife’s influenza – in neither case supported by medical certificates).  In allowing the second postponement – with great reluctance – the Chairman was highly critical of Mr. Deman’s conduct, which he described as discourteous to both the Tribunal and the respondents, and made it clear that he was considering making an award of expenses.

(4)	There were at least two unsuccessful appeals to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against interlocutory orders – the second of which at least was dismissed (by Lady Smith) on the basis that it raised no arguable point of law.  It appears that in these applications Mr. Deman made the same allegations of institutionalised racism and improper Labour party influence in the Tribunals in Scotland as he had made about the Tribunals in England.

UNIVERSITY OF WALES, SWANSEA  

84.	On 17th February 2000 Mr. Deman commenced proceedings against the University of Wales, Swansea alleging both racial and sex discrimination in his non-selection for the post of Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in the European Business Management School.  

85.	The proceedings had a complicated and unsatisfactory interlocutory history.  We draw attention to the following points:

(1)	On 10th July 2000 Mr. Deman wrote to the Tribunal office.  The terms of the letter are not before us, but it appears that it contained an application to strike out the respondents’ Notice of Appearance.  The application was dismissed by letter from the Regional Secretary on the basis that Mr. Deman had given no grounds of any substance.  The terms of Mr. Deman’s letter were described as “scurrilous”.

(2)	A further application to strike out was made at a hearing on 31st July 2001.  It was dismissed in terms that make it clear that it had no real prospect of success, and the Chairman described some of Mr. Deman’s submissions as misconceived.

(3)	A hearing listed for November 2001 was adjourned at Mr. Deman’s request on the basis that he was suffering from chronic anxiety and depression.

(4)	The case was again listed for hearing on 1st December 2003, and Mr. Deman had instructed counsel.  Unfortunately counsel withdrew for professional reasons and the case had to be adjourned.  (Initially, Mr. Linden sought to rely on the reasons given by counsel for withdrawing; but after some discussion before us he abandoned that reliance and we have paid no regard to that material.)  On this occasion Mr. Deman’s sex discrimination claim was dismissed on withdrawal.

(5)	There were difficulties obtaining a further hearing date: there was at least one further application by Mr. Deman for a postponement on the grounds of ill-health.  The case was eventually listed for five days commencing on 7th March 2005.  On the morning of the hearing Mr. Deman applied for an adjournment.  A variety of grounds were given, including medical evidence: as regards this, Mr. Deman relied on (a) psychiatric advice not to become engaged in Tribunal hearings with less than a ten-day interval between them and (b) an assertion that his concentration was affected by anti-depressant medication which he was taking.  The University supported the application for an adjournment and the Tribunal felt that it had no alternative but to agree, albeit with “considerable reluctance”.  

(6)	There was further correspondence which we do not have in full.  But on 14th June 2005 and 19th September 2005 the Regional Chairman wrote to CEM deploring offensive and scurrilous comments made by it and/or Mr. Deman.  

86.	In November 2005 Mr. Deman and the University reached a settlement under which Mr. Deman was paid £15,500.  In correspondence with the Tribunal relating to the settlement CEM “reserved the right to pursue complaints against some members of staff and judiciary of the Tribunal”: the letter asserted that complaints against the Regional Chairman were already being investigated by the Lord Chancellor and the DTI, but we have no further information about this.

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

87.	Over the course of 2001 Mr. Deman commenced three separate claims alleging racial discrimination against the University of Nottingham and, in the case of two of the claims, Prof. Gow (who had previously encountered Mr. Deman at Sheffield – see para. 14 above) and Mrs Morehen, the University’s Director of Personnel.  The applications related to the failure of the University to short-list him for, in all, ten posts for which he had applied in the University’s School of Economics and Business School.  

88.	A hearing in all three claims was fixed for 4th-15th February 2002.  The claims were to be heard together with a claim being brought against the University by Mr Titterington, and Mr Titterington was to represent Mr. Deman as well as himself.  In January 2002 an application was made to postpone the hearing, on the grounds of Mr. Deman’s and Mr Titterington’s other commitments.  The application was refused.  Immediately following this refusal Mr Titterington withdrew his own claim and withdrew as Mr. Deman’s representative.  Mr. Deman thereupon made a fresh application to postpone on the grounds that he had lost his representation, and that application was successful.  

89.	There followed a long period in which Mr. Deman sought to persuade the Tribunal not to list his claims.  He gave two distinct reasons – first, that he had made a claim for assistance to the CRE which it had delayed dealing with; and secondly, that he was suffering from ill-health.  The Tribunal became increasingly sceptical of Mr. Deman’s claims in this regard.  On 4th February 2004, in connection with an application by Mr. Deman to postpone a hearing fixed for 9th February 2004, the Chairman conducting the correspondence (Mr. Keevash) required him, if he wished to proceed with his application, to produce a full and detailed medical report stating, inter alia, “the nature and prognosis of [his] medical condition so as to include details of symptoms, the causes and the severity”.  On 5th February 2004 Mr. Deman provided what a subsequent Tribunal referred to as “patchy and incomplete medical details as to his unfitness”, blaming the fact that his GP was “not only unavailable but he asked £50 for a letter which I can’t afford right now being on Income Support”; and also contending that NHS rules prohibited his GP from providing the information.  In the event the postponement was granted, but the Chairman required Mr. Deman to provide – albeit “in arrears” – a full medical report.  On 23rd February 2004 Mr. Deman wrote to the Tribunal saying that he was unable to provide such a certificate because he had been told by his GP that he “was not allowed to provide any certificates and/or medical reports” under NHS regulations.  Mr. Deman said that he was accordingly now “abandoning” the “medical reasons” for the postponement application.  That abandonment was, of course, empty since the postponement had already been granted.

90.	In these circumstances an Employment Tribunal in Nottingham, chaired by Mr. Garnon, held a hearing on 16th April 2004 to consider the future of the proceedings.  Mr. Deman did not attend and was not represented.  The Tribunal considered the interlocutory history in detail and ordered that within 21 days Mr. Deman should show cause in writing why his applications should not be struck out for failure to comply with the directions given in it letter of 6th February 2004 and/or for unreasonable conduct in the proceedings.  The Reasons, which are extensive, are highly critical of Mr. Deman’s conduct in a number of respects, including what it perceived as attempts by Mr. Deman to present CEM as independent of himself, whereas it was in fact his alter ego, and the advancing of apparently bogus medical grounds in order to obtain an adjournment.   

91.	In the event, at a further hearing on 3rd June 2004 the Tribunal decided not to strike out the applications.  To some extent, although by no means wholly, the Tribunal modified the criticisms of Mr. Deman made in the previous decision.  In particular (although the details are obscure) it appears to have accepted that there was a genuine dispute between Mr. Deman and his doctor which made it difficult for him to obtain a medical report.  However, it went on to warn CEM against continuing to conduct correspondence in what it described as “vexatious” terms.

92.	Mr. Linden sought to persuade us that the very trenchant criticisms expressed of  Mr. Deman and CEM in the earlier decision are nearer the mark and that if the Tribunal at the second hearing had had the fuller background available to this Tribunal  it would have been less willing to modify its comments.  That may be so, but the detailed enquiries required to adjudicate on the issue in detail would not be justified.  It is clear that, even on its revised view, the Tribunal was critical of the manner in which Mr. Deman and CEM had handled the entire episode of the attempt to obtain an adjournment. 

93.	The hearing of Mr. Deman’s claims took place over 24 days between 25th November 2004 and 24th March 2005 before a Tribunal in Nottingham chaired (again) by Mr. Garnon.  The majority of his claims were dismissed, but he succeeded to a limited extent in as much as the University was ordered to pay compensation in the sum of £12,500.  The position can be summarised as follows:

(1)	In relation to none of the jobs in respect of which Mr. Deman claimed was the failure to short-list him held to be on racial grounds.  

(2)	In relation to most of the jobs in question the Tribunal concluded that Mr. Deman was simply not of the requisite quality.  While paying tribute to his academic achievements at an earlier stage of his career, it observed:

	“…[I]t must be said that Mr. Deman will always struggle actually to secure an appointment now in a highly rated old University for two main reasons.  The first is that he presents himself as too versatile, applying for all manner of jobs thus coming across as a jack of all trades and master of none.  Secondly, his academic career since 1996, in particular his research, does appear to have taken second place in his life to various other matters, including the conduct of litigation.  To get back into his chosen field he must start working in it again, now in 2005 he is very nearly a decade away from what was undoubtedly his finest period in 1988-1996.”

(3)	Prof. Gow had been involved in Mr. Deman’s applications for posts in the Business School (as opposed to the School of Economics) which were the subject of two of the three claims.  The Tribunal found that Prof. Gow had deeply (and with justification) resented the allegation made in Sheffield 1 that he was a racist and that that had led him to intervene in order to ensure that Mr. Deman was not short-listed; that his influence led to unfair treatment by those responsible for short-listing; and that this constituted victimisation.  Since the Tribunal did not believe that Mr. Deman would have been appointed in any event, the amount awarded was for injury to feelings only.

IMPERIAL COLLEGE

94.	On 5th March 2001 Mr. Deman commenced proceedings against Imperial College, London complaining of racial discrimination in his non-short-listing for appointment as a Lecturer in 1999.

95.	We do not have the full interlocutory correspondence.  It appears that Mr. Deman was dissatisfied with at least one decision of the Chairman and both appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal and complained to the Lord Chancellor alleging, among other things, that a fair hearing was impossible in the London Central Tribunal.  We do however have the correspondence relating to a preliminary hearing arranged for 4th October 2001: the Chairman responsible was Mrs. Mason.  On 12th September 2001 Mr. Deman applied for a postponement on the basis that he was concerned over the possible fate of members of his family in the terrorist attacks of 11th September: no details were given.  The application was refused, with liberty to re-apply in case of any change in the situation.  The application was renewed, and the Tribunal repeated its position, making it clear that if a particularised application were made – with details either of any bereavement or of any medical condition - it would be considered.  Mr. Deman replied in offensive terms describing the response as “racially insensitive”: he said it would take “some time” before he could produce a medical certificate.  He appealed.  Both that and the earlier appeal were heard before an Appeal Tribunal chaired by Mr. Recorder Langstaff on 26th September 2001.  Mr. Deman did not attend.  The appeals were dismissed.  The Appeal Tribunal said that it was “very tempting indeed” to accede to an application for costs made by the University but declined to do so, while stating that the University would be entitled to rely on Mr. Deman’s unreasonable conduct in bringing the appeal if it were material to any subsequent application for costs.

96.	  At the commencement of the hearing before the Employment Tribunal Mr. Deman renewed his application to adjourn on three grounds – that he had lost a cousin on 11th September; that he was ill (he produced a doctor’s letter saying that he suffered from anxiety and depression, vertigo, rheumatic pains and irritable bowel syndrome); and that his sleep the previous night had been repeatedly interrupted by calls from a relative who (wrongly) believed that her husband was on a flight which had been hijacked.  The Tribunal granted an adjournment on the cautious basis that there was “sufficient doubt regarding Mr. Deman’s ability to proceed”: it postponed any issue as to the costs thrown away.  Various interlocutory orders were made.

97.	There was further confused and confusing interlocutory correspondence which we need not recapitulate here, save to note that considerable complications were caused by problems over the availability of two witnesses whom Mr. Deman wished to call (one of them being Mr. Titterington) and that the tone of the correspondence from CEM was thoroughly offensive and ill-judged, referring among other things to “racist nonsense at the Tribunal” and threatening to call the Regional Chairman as a witness.

98.	The proceedings were eventually settled in March 2005 by a payment of £14,500 split equally between CEM and I-AS.

CITY UNIVERSITY

99.	On 21st June 2001 Mr. Deman started proceedings alleging racial discrimination on the part of the City University in failing to appoint him to one of three posts at Lecturer/Senior Lecturer level which had been advertised in its Business School – in Finance in the Department of Shipping Trade and Finance, in Finance in the Department of Banking and Finance and in Quantitative Methods in the Department of Management Systems and Finance.

100.	The subsequent procedural history is helpfully set out in a later Judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, chaired by Judge Birtles, which we gratefully adopt verbatim.

7 January 2002:	Case fixed for hearing over five days, between 21 and 25 October 2002.  The case was fixed by agreement at a Directions Hearing at which the Appellant was present.
	
1 August 2002:	Appellant applied in writing for the case to be adjourned on the ground that it clashed with another case in which he was the Applicant in the Ashford Employment Tribunal [being his claim against the University of Greenwich].  The case had been fixed after the present case.
	
6 September 2002:	The Commission for Racial Equality wrote to the Employment Tribunal inviting it to adjourn the hearing on the ground that the Appellant had approached it for assistance and that application was being considered.  The Respondent had not seen that letter at that date.
	
30 September 2002:	An Employment Tribunal Chairman (Mr Menon) refused the application for an adjournment with reasons.  The Chairman suggested that the Appellant should apply to the Ashford Employment Tribunal for that hearing to be adjourned.
	
13 October 2002:	[Mr. Deman] made a fresh application for an adjournment on the ground that his representative (Mr. Graham of the Council for Ethnic Minority) was unavailable on 21 October 2002.
	
14 October 2002:	A Chairman (Mr Menon) refused this application for an adjournment.
	
16 October 2002:	[Mr. Deman] lodged an appeal against the decision of Mr Menon given on 30 September 202 refusing his application for an adjournment.
	
18 October 2002:	The Employment Appeal Tribunal (His Honour Judge McMullen QC) dismissed [Mr. Deman]’s appeal against the decision of Mr Menon dated 30 September refusing [Mr. Deman]’s application for an adjournment.	

We note that at the hearing on 18th October 2002:

	(i)	the Appellant failed to attend the specially-convened hearing;

	(ii)	an order for costs was made against the Appellant;

(iii)	the judge specifically suggested that his judgment could be put before the Ashford Tribunal with a view to that hearing being adjourned.  No such application was apparently made.

101.	Mr. Deman sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal from the Order of Judge McMullen.  Save as regards costs, the appeal was wholly academic since the hearing had proceeded in the meantime.  Permission was refused on paper.  Mr. Deman required an oral hearing.  At a hearing before Peter Gibson LJ on 16 May 2003 permission was refused.  

102.	The hearing of the substantive application proceeded at the London Central Employment Tribunal before a Tribunal chaired by Mr Baron.  The progress of the hearing was very unsatisfactory.  Again, we gratefully adopt the summary given by Judge Birtles.

21 October 2002:	Hearing Day 1
	
	The Appellant made an application to strike out the Respondent’s Notice of Appearance.  This was rejected by the Employment Tribunal.
	
	The Appellant then made an application to adjourn the hearing on the basis that it clashed with the hearing in Ashford Employment Tribunal, i.e. the same ground as that rejected by the Chairman and the Employment Appeal Tribunal.  This application was rejected by the Employment Tribunal.
	
	In the afternoon of that day Mr. Graham appeared and made an application on behalf of the Appellant for a direction that the Employment Tribunal should recuse itself from hearing the case on the basis that (a) it was biased against the Appellant and (b) that the Employment Tribunal system in general was biased against the Appellant.  This application was refused.
	
	The whole of Day 1 was devoted to the various applications made by and on behalf of the Appellant.  No evidence (save from the Respondent’s solicitor in relation to procedural matters) were heard.
	
22 October 2002:	Hearing Day 2
	
	The Appellant made a further application for an adjournment.  This was on a new ground.  The Appellant claimed that the following day (23 October 2002) his wife was due to appear in Croydon Employment Tribunal in a case in which she was the Applicant and in which he was due to represent her.  This point had never been raised before.  The Appellant asserted that he had only discovered on the night of 21 October 2002 (i.e. the previous evening) that the hearing had been listed for 23 October 2002.  Enquiries revealed that the notice of that hearing had been sent out to the parties on 18 July 2002.  The application was refused.
	
	The Appellant enquired of the Employment Tribunal whether an application for an adjournment would succeed if he were to receive a Witness Order from the Croydon Employment Tribunal.
	
	The Appellant then made applications for Witness Orders.
	
	The Appellant made a further application that the Employment Tribunal should recuse itself on the grounds that it was biased.  The application was refused.
	
	The Appellant made an application for a Witness Order against the President of the Employment Tribunals (His Honour Judge Prophet).  That application was refused.
	
	The Appellant made an application for the proceedings to be recorded on video.  That application was refused.
	
	At approximately 11.30am the Employment Tribunal then considered how the substantive case could be completed in the time remaining that week.  The Employment Tribunal set a timetable for completion of evidence and submissions.
	
	Thereafter the remainder of Day 2 was taken up by the Appellant’s evidence in chief and cross-examination.
	
23 October 2002:	Hearing Day 3
	
	Cross-examination continued in the morning and the Employment Tribunal later extended the timetable by an additional 30 minutes on the sitting day.  The Appellant objected to this and said that he was unable to arrive before 10.00am and had to leave by 4.00pm because of childcare arrangements.
	
	The Appellant then applied for an adjournment on the basis that he had been served with a Witness Order from the Ashford Employment Tribunal.  The Order was dated 23 October 2002 and required the Appellant to attend from 2.00pm on 24 October 2002 and on 25 October 2002.  The Respondent invited the Employment Tribunal to make enquiries of the Ashford Employment Tribunal in order to establish the circumstances in which the Witness Order came to be issued.  The Employment Tribunal made enquiries, invited submissions and reached a conclusion in the following terms:
	
		We decided that we did have jurisdiction to grant an adjournment because there had been a material change of circumstances since the previous application had been made and determination by Mr Menon.  We then considered whether we should exercise our discretion to grant the adjournment.  We concluded that the [Appellant] had deliberately concealed from the Ashford Tribunal the full facts.  We found the application for the order was an abuse of the Tribunal procedure.  This application for an adjournment was therefore refused.
	
	No further evidence was heard in the afternoon.  It was clear that the case could not be completed in the remaining two days and there was discussions about convenient dates for fixing the extra days now required.  No new dates were fixed.  The Employment Tribunal rose early specifically to enable the Appellant:
	
		… to contact the solicitors acting for him in the Ashford Tribunal so that an explanation could be provided to that Tribunal on the following day for his absence.
	
24 October 2002:	Hearing Day 4
	
	The Appellant failed to attend the hearing.  The Employment Tribunal concluded that:
	
		…without there having been any explanation from or on behalf of the [Appellant] as to his absence we decided to continue with the hearing… we concluded in all probability that the [Appellant] had deliberately absented himself from the hearing.
	
	The Employment Tribunal proceeded to hearing the remainder of the case on Thursday 24 October 2002 and Friday 25 October 2002.	

103.	That summary is sufficient to demonstrate that, on the Tribunal’s findings, Mr. Deman made a whole series of misconceived, and sometimes disingenuous, applications to the Tribunal which gravely disrupted the proper conduct of the hearing.  Mr. Deman had no doubt got himself into a difficult situation as a result of being double-booked in the London and Ashford Tribunals, and it may indeed be, as Mr. Davies submitted, that his conduct was as a result of “panicking” in what he perceived to be an impossible predicament.  But that predicament was of his own making (and was indeed a consequence, though an avoidable one, of his voluntary involvement in multiple litigation); and it was capable of being resolved by sensible co-operation if he had been honest with both Tribunals – particularly as he was represented by Mr Davies in the Ashford case.  It was not necessary for him to duck and weave in the manner that he chose.  

104.	It would be possible to put flesh on the bones of Judge Birtles’ summary by extensive quotation from the eventual Judgment of the Employment Tribunal.  We do not believe that to be necessary, but there are some particular points to which we should draw attention:

(1)	The Tribunal recorded offensive and intemperate remarks made by both Mr. Graham (explicitly adopted by Mr. Deman) and Mr. Deman himself.

(2)	The applications made by Mr. Deman which, as Judge Birtles noted, occupied the whole of the first day of the hearing were plainly ill-founded.  Matters about which Mr. Deman criticised the respondents were in fact held by the Tribunal to be the result of the default by Mr. Deman himself.

(3)	Mr. Deman persisted in seeking to persuade the Tribunal to overturn Mr Menon’s refusal to adjourn the hearing, notwithstanding that there had been no material change of circumstances and that that decision had already been unsuccessfully appealed to the Appeal Tribunal.  

(4)	Mr. Deman applied for a witness order against Mr Titterington.  The Tribunal declined to place any weight on draft “witness statements” in the names of Dr Tambyrajah and Mr Titterington, at least partly on the basis that they appeared to have been drafted by Mr. Deman and not adopted by their purported makers.

105.	The eventual decision of the Tribunal, in a decision sent to the parties on 10th December 2002, was that his claim in respect of each of the posts should be dismissed.  The Tribunal made similar observations to other Tribunals which we have referred to above about the problematic nature of Mr. Deman’s CV, and in particular his poor record of publications in the current “RAE period”.  For two of the three posts, the Tribunal pointed out that Mr. Deman failed to satisfy the basic published criteria for the appointment since he did not have a Ph. D. (nor was about to receive one).    (He was in fact interviewed for one of these jobs, since his CV did not make it clear that he did not have a Ph.D.: it used the code “Ph. D. (disp.)”, where “disp.” was meant to mean “disputed” and to refer to his claim that Bradford University’s refusal of a Ph. D. was unlawful – but that was hardly transparent.  The true position only became clear at interview.)  In relation to the third, his CV did not appear to show experience in any of the relevant fields.  The successful applicant was Chinese.  Mr. Deman alleged that he had been appointed so as to avoid any allegation of racial discrimination.  The Tribunal described that suggestion as unsupported by any evidence and simply fanciful. 

106.	The University applied for an order for costs.  A hearing was fixed for 3rd January 2003.  At the commencement of the hearing Mr. Deman applied for an adjournment.  He advanced a number of grounds, including ill-health.  He relied on a medical certificate signing him off work for six weeks for “anxiety, depression, vertigo”: although he was self evidently fit enough to attend the Tribunal, he said that he was not fit enough to read a detailed statement to the Tribunal as he wished to do.  The application was refused, among other things because the Tribunal was not satisfied that Mr. Deman was medically unfit to represent himself and it had doubts about the authenticity of the medical certificate.  As a result of this and other applications, there was substantial delay in commencing submissions on the substantive question of whether an order for costs should be made in favour of the University.  While the respondents’ submissions were still proceeding, Mr. Deman, as the Tribunal put it, “appeared to be taken ill”.  An ambulance was called and he was taken to hospital.  The hearing was, perforce, adjourned.  The hearing was eventually resumed on 26th August 2003, and the Tribunal ordered Mr. Deman to pay the University the sum of £10,000 by way of costs.  It held that, in respect to the two of the posts at least, Mr. Deman’s claims stood no reasonable prospect of success and were misconceived because he did not satisfy the advertised criteria.  It also held that Mr. Deman had acted unreasonably in the conduct of the proceedings.  

107.	Mr. Deman appealed against the substantive decision of the Tribunal.  He deployed a version of his affidavit on institutionalised bias in the Tribunals.  The appeal was dismissed at an inter partes preliminary hearing on 5th November 2003: it is the Judgment of Judge Birtles in this case from which we have taken the summary of the proceedings in the Tribunal which we have used above.  

108.	Mr. Deman also appealed against the decision of the Tribunal on the costs issue.  This, like the appeal on the substantive issue, was founded on allegations of bias against the Employment Tribunal.  Following the dismissal of the appeal on the substantive issue, the Appeal Tribunal ordered Mr. Deman to show cause why his appeal on the costs decision should not also be dismissed.  After some procedural hiccups into which it is unnecessary that we should go, the costs appeal was dismissed without a substantive hearing.

109.	Mr. Deman sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal against both decisions of the Appeal Tribunal (and indeed two further decisions on interlocutory matters relating to these proceedings of which we do not have the details).  All were dismissed on paper by Brooke LJ; and his decision was affirmed at an oral hearing by Buxton LJ on 15th June 2005.  It was in the context of these appeals, which he described as being “totally without merit”, that Brooke LJ made the orders referred to in para. 3 above.

LEEDS METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

110.	On 18th September 2001 Mr. Deman started proceedings against Leeds Metropolitan University and three other named respondents, who were employees or officers of the University.  The application referred to failures to short-list or appoint him to a number of posts for which he had applied since 1996, but at a subsequent directions hearing he accepted that the only claim that was within time related to the failure to short-list him for a post of Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in the School of Accounting and Finance which had been advertised in May 2001.  

111.	There are three points of note about the interlocutory history:

(1)	It was in the course of the correspondence with the Tribunal that Mr. Deman (or, strictly, CEM on his behalf) approached Judge Prophet for a witness statement: see para. 11 above.  An application to the Tribunal for a witness order against Judge Prophet was plainly misconceived and was refused.  

(2)	Offensive allegations of bias were made against Mr Hildebrand, the Chairman with interlocutory conduct of the case.  One of his letters was described by CEM as containing “pro employer racist nonsense”; and Mr. Deman alleged that Mr Hildebrand’s directions “have shown considerable bias which will be dealt with at the full Tribunal along with institutionalised racism”.

(3)	Considerable confusion was caused by Mr. Deman’s practice of having letters written on his behalf by CEM.  

112.	The substantive hearing took place in Leeds, before a Tribunal chaired by Mr Hildebrand, between 23rd and 26th April 2002.  On the first day of the hearing much time was taken up by Mr. Deman repeating his allegation of institutionalised racism and of bias against Mr Hildebrand, together with an application for permission to videotape the proceedings.  In the event, however, the remainder of the hearing passed without incident, save for an isolated instance of misbehaviour by Mr. Graham.  The Tribunal noted that there was a good deal of irrelevant and argumentative cross examination, but it was not such as to prevent the hearing being concluded.  In a reserved decision sent to the parties on 30th May 2002 the Tribunal dismissed Mr. Deman’s claim for discrimination.  As regards the Lecturership in Economics, it held that the candidate who was appointed had “demonstrably better qualifications than the applicant having a doctorate and relevant recent teaching experience”.  Likewise, in relation to the Lecturership in Finance the Tribunal noted that “the applicant had inferior qualifications than the successful applicant, lacking a doctorate”.  It also noted that the presentation of his academic career in his CV was confusing and unhelpful.

113.	Mr. Deman appealed.  His grounds rehearsed his usual complaints of bias in the Tribunal system generally and were supported by a version of his usual affidavit.  He also advanced particular criticisms of the decision of the Tribunal.  At a preliminary hearing on 14th January 2003, before an Appeal Tribunal chaired by Mr. Recorder Luba QC, the appeal was dismissed as having no reasonable prospect of success.  Mr. Deman then sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.  The application came before Keene LJ for an oral hearing on 16th June 2003.  Mr. Deman sought an adjournment on the basis that he was awaiting decisions from the Legal Services Commission and the CRE as to whether to afford him assistance.  Those applications were refused.  He also asked Keene LJ to recuse himself on the basis that he was listed to sit later that day with Peter Gibson LJ, who had refused him permission in the City University case.  That application was plainly misconceived and was also refused.  Keene LJ went on to hear the application for permission and dismissed it as having no reasonable prospect of success.  

UNIVERSITY OF WALES, ABERYSTWYTH

114.	On 5th December 2001 Mr. Deman started proceedings against the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and two named respondents (Prof. Cable, and Mr. Fletcher, the Director of Personnel) alleging racial discrimination in his non-appointment to a Lecturership in Finance and Economics.

115.	The respondents applied to strike out the application.  In a letter to the Tribunal dated 5th March 2002 CEM sought a witness order against Judge Prophet “who would give evidence about the Tribunal’s institutionalised bias against Mr. Deman”.  In a further letter dated 12th October 2002 it described the Chairman as “pro-employer and racist” because he had decided to list the University’s application for a hearing.  The application was listed on 27th March 2003: Mr. Deman did not attend and his claim was dismissed.  It subsequently transpired that Mr. Deman had, as the Tribunal found on the balance of probabilities, received no notice of the application because CEM – at that point his nominated representative – had changed its address: the change of address had been communicated in the most obscure and confusing manner, but the Tribunal felt obliged to review its decision and the striking-out order was revoked.  The evidence before us was that the substantive hearing had been fixed for February 2006, but we do not know if it proceeded or if so with what result.  

EUROPEAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

116.	On 7th April 2002 Mr. Deman started proceedings alleging discrimination by the European School of Economics (“ESE”), its Director of Academic Programmes, Dr. Coates, and the Director of its Business School, Dr. Mitchell, arising out of its failure to appoint him to the positions of “Adjunct Lecturer” and/or Assistant Academic Director.  We do not know much about ESE; but it appears from the eventual Tribunal decision that it was a private institution based in London controlled by two members of a family and was in considerable financial difficulties: it was placed in administration in May 2004.  It did not instruct lawyers to handle the claim.  At a late stage in the proceedings it was claimed on behalf of ESE that its defence had been conducted by Dr. Mitchell without the authority of the Board.

117.	The interlocutory history of the proceedings was troubled, and the Tribunal described it as “bad tempered litigation” – though this reflects on the respondents, and their representatives, as much as on Mr. Deman.  For the purposes of the present application, we need only note that on 29th May 2002 Mr. Deman applied for the proceedings to be transferred to “another jurisdiction preferably Scotland”, apparently because the Tribunals in England and Wales generally and in London South in particular were said to be biased against him.  Mr. Deman relied, among other things, on an allegation that the London South Tribunal had refused to accept him as a lay representative in a claim being brought by his wife.  That application was plainly misconceived and was dismissed by the Regional Chairman, Mr Meeran.  Mr Meeran also rebutted as “wholly untrue” the allegation that Mr. Deman had not been accepted as his wife’s representative, pointing out that he was on the record as her representative and had been expressly told as much in a letter from the Tribunal.

118.	The hearing of the application was listed for three days beginning on 6th May 2003 before a Tribunal chaired by Mr. MacInnes.  It proved impossible to proceed because of applications made both by Mr. Deman and by the respondents.  We are for present purposes concerned principally with the applications made by Mr. Deman.  These included applications (a) that the proceedings should be video-taped; (b) that the Tribunal should require the attendance of Judge Meeran, who by that date had succeeded Judge Prophet as the President of the Employment Tribunals, to give evidence at the hearing; and (c) that the Tribunal should recuse itself on grounds of bias.  All three applications were plainly ill-founded and the allegation of bias was made in the most offensive terms.  The Tribunal dismissed each of them – plainly rightly.  

119.	Mr. Deman sought a review of that decision, and in particular of the Tribunal’s decision to refuse his application for a witness order against Judge Meeran.  The Chairman refused that application on the basis that it had no reasonable prospect of success.  Mr. Deman’s complaints about the Tribunal system, which he wished to ventilate through a cross-examination of Judge Meeran, had nothing whatever to do with any of the issues in the proceedings.

120.	The substantive hearing of Mr. Deman’s complaint took place before a Tribunal sitting at London South, chaired (again) by Mr MacInnes, between 20th and 23rd October 2003.  At the start of the proceedings Mr. Deman applied for permission to tape-record the proceedings.  The application was refused.  There had been no change in circumstances since the like application had been refused at the earlier hearing.  More substantially, Mr. Deman applied for the Tribunal to recuse itself on the grounds that, to summarise, (a) one of the lay members, Mr Abrams, had been Deputy Chairman of the CRE between 1989 and 1992 and Mr. Deman had himself brought several claims against the Commission, although not relating to that period; (b) Mr Abrams was a member of the Labour Party and Mr Triesman, who was General Secretary of the Labour Party was a respondent in the proceedings being brought by Mr. Deman against the AUT; (c) both this Tribunal and the Tribunals generally were biased against him.  All these grounds were rejected.  The respondents submitted that the objections themselves constituted to an abuse of the process and were scandalous and vexatious and that Mr. Deman’s claim should be struck out.  As to that, the Tribunal said this:

“It is the unanimous decision of the Tribunal not to strike out the Applicant’s Originating Application for scandalous, unreasonable or vexatious behaviour.  However, the Tribunal does express its concern that the Applicant appears to be providing the Tribunal with information relating to matters that do not concern this case with a sole purpose of seeking to raise a conflict of interest.  If this was the case it would in the view of the Tribunal be unreasonable and vexatious conduct.  The Tribunal is also concerned that the Applicant is making applications raising issues already dealt with by the Tribunal.  The Tribunal considers this to be potentially unreasonable and vexatious conduct.  The Tribunal is dealing with events which are now some two years old.  Words to the parties confirm that the hearing on 8 May that they had no further applications to make and at this hearing was set down for the three days 20, 21 and 22 October to deal with the merits of the Applicant’s case.  The Tribunal is concerned that we must get on with the merits of the Applicant’s case and it will not accept unreasonable or vexatious conduct designed to delay the proceedings.”  

The Tribunal proceeded to consider failures of disclosure on the part of the respondents, as a result of which it felt obliged to adjourn the hearing further, with an order for costs against the respondents. 

121.	Mr. Deman sought a review of the observations made about his conduct in the decision of the Tribunal to which we refer above.  The application was dismissed by the Chairman on the basis that it had no reasonable prospect of success.  

122.	It appears, although we do not have very full information about this, that Mr. Deman also appealed to the Appeal Tribunal against the decision not to strike out the respondents’ Notice of Appearance by reason of their failures of disclosure.  It appears that that appeal was dismissed under the “sift” procedure.  Mr. Deman sought a rule 3 (10) hearing.  That hearing was listed before Cox J on 17th May 2004.  Mr. Deman did not appear and the appeal was dismissed.  On receipt of the order CEM wrote to the Registrar of the Appeal Tribunal complaining that he had not received notice of the hearing.  It appears from the letter, although we do not have the details, that he had sought an adjournment on the basis of ill health: he claims to have supplied a medical certificate covering the period until 14th May 2004, although it is not clear to us why this should have prevented the listing of a hearing on 17th May 2004. The letter was in offensive terms.  Among other things it said:

“It is a matter of record that Mr Leahy at Manchester Tribunal, Respondents, EAT, Croydon Tribunal and the Roman Catholic Private Limited Company of Irish and Zionist origin were colluded with each other to resume the hearing from 17 May 2004 in Mr. Deman’s absence … .  It appears to us under Sharon-Bush-Blair Regimes Iraqis are abused and under Zionist-Irish Roman Catholic Regimes of the Employment Tribunals and EAT Mr. Deman is being abused on a regular basis.”  

Mr. Deman sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal, but it appears that he subsequently withdrew the appeal.

123.	ESE – which was by now in administration - was debarred from defending in August 2004 for failure to comply with interlocutory directions.  The claim continued against the individual respondents.  The hearing of the claim resumed on 6th September 2004.  Dr. Coates, who was no longer employed by ESE and was ill, took no part in the proceedings.  The only effective respondent was thus Dr. Mitchell.  By a Reserved Judgment sent to the parties on 24th January 2005 the Tribunal found that ESE and Dr. Coates had discriminated against Mr. Deman, essentially on the basis that no adequate explanation had been offered of his non-appointment: it dismissed the claim against Dr. Mitchell.  The claim based on alleged victimisation was dismissed.  It was based entirely on the fact that his CV had included the phrase “PhD/Race Dispute – University of Bradford”, which he invited the Tribunal to infer would have put ESE on notice of his claim against the University of Bradford.  The Tribunal concluded, plainly rightly, that no proper inference could be drawn from that fact.

124.	At a subsequent remedies hearing the Tribunal made an award against ESE, in the sum of £35,667.90, but, very oddly in view of its finding at the previous hearing, it dismissed the claim against Dr. Coates.  The Employment Appeal Tribunal has very recently reinstated the judgment against Dr. Coates and remitted the case to a fresh Tribunal for consideration of what order for compensation should be made against her.  We do not know if any sum was recovered from ESE, but in view of its financial difficulties it seems unlikely.  It remains to be seen whether any substantial award will be made against Dr. Coates.  Overall, while it is right that in this case Mr. Deman was successful in establishing that he had been discriminated against, the circumstances were decidedly unusual.  

EUROPEAN BUSINESS SCHOOL

125.	On 28th May 2004 Mr. Deman started proceedings against the European Business School (“EBS”) – a private business school in London forming part of Regent’s College - alleging that it had discriminated against him on racial grounds by not short-listing him for a post as “Subject Leader in Accounting and Finance”.  The papers which we have relating to these proceedings are limited, and we have no significant information relating to the interlocutory history.

126.	The hearing took place before a Tribunal at London Central, chaired by Mr Ryan, between 25th and 29th April 2005.  The claim was dismissed.  The Tribunal was satisfied that the reason why Mr. Deman was not short-listed was that he lacked sufficient managerial experience for the post in question.  The Reasons, sent to the parties on 17th August 2005, record that on the second day of the hearing Mr. Deman raised an allegation that the Chairman (though, he wished to emphasis, not the lay members) was biased against him.  The reasons advanced by him were patently inadequate, and the Tribunal, after retiring, decided that they should not recuse themselves.

127.	Mr. Deman lodged an appeal at the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the decision of the Tribunal.  He repeated the allegation of bias on the part of Mr. Ryan in the conduct of the hearing but included in his Notice of Appeal more general allegations, including: 

-	that “the London Central Tribunal under the Chairmanship of Mr Latham continues with Mrs. Mason’s legacy and does not hesitate to coach Chairman and the lay members against the Claimant prior to the hearing”;

-	allegations of bias against the Registrar and the then President of the Appeal Tribunal (Burton J.) and a number of individual judges.

The paragraphs in question were struck out by ex parte order as an abuse of process.  The allegations of “particular” bias were allowed to proceed.  We do not have the affidavit(s) lodged in support but we do have the comments of the Chairman and the lay members.  We should not and do not comment on the substance, since the appeal is still pending.  

128.	A hearing in the Appeal Tribunal fixed for 24th January 2006 was vacated on the basis of medical evidence which seems to have been similar to that deployed (unsuccessfully) in “Bradford 4” in order to obtain the adjournment of the hearing of 18th January 2006 (see para. 74 above): we should say that we see nothing surprising in the fact that the Appeal Tribunal, having to deal with the matter by way of correspondence and without the full background available to Mr. Hildebrand, was prepared to accept that material at face value when he was not.

129.	On 4th November 2005 Mr. Deman started further proceedings against EBS alleging racial discrimination in his non-short-listing for a part-time Lecturership in Mergers and Acquisitions.  We have very limited information about this claim, which has apparently not progressed very far.  We have mentioned it for completeness, but we need say no more about it.  

SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES

130.	On 13th July 2004 Mr. Deman brought a claim of racial discrimination against the School of Oriental and African Studies (“SOAS”) at the University of London, arising out of the failure of SOAS to short-list him for a post of part-time Research Co-ordinator.  The post had been advertised in September 2003, and the application was accordingly on the face of it out-of-time; but Mr. Deman claimed that he had made repeated telephone calls to SOAS, extending to as late as May 2004, and that this meant that the claim was in fact within time.  

131.	We have no details of the interlocutory history.  The claim came before a Employment Tribunal sitting at London Central, chaired by Mr Edge, between 12th and 14th October 2005.  We summarise its findings as follows:

(1)	The Tribunal held that the claim was out-of-time.  It found that Mr. Deman had lied about having made the telephone calls on which he relied and that entries in his diary which he claimed were contemporary records of those calls were forgeries.  

(2)	The Tribunal also found that in any event the substantive claims would have failed.  It did not find it surprising that Mr. Deman had not been short-listed.  The short-listed candidates were evidently more impressive.  There was no evidence that those involved in the process had any knowledge of Mr. Deman’s litigation history so as to found a claim for victimisation.

(3)	In connection with the weakness of Mr. Deman’s application, the Tribunal noted the poor presentation of his application.  The covering letter simply recycled an earlier application for a different job, without any attempt to tailor.  The application form included numerous spelling and typing errors and left some parts incomplete.  His CV was repetitious and disorganised.  (We are bound to say that these comments reflect our own impression of Mr. Deman’s documents, which are littered with spelling and grammatical errors in a way which is surprising for a man of his academic attainments and unlikely to inspire confidence in an academic context.) 

(4)	The Tribunal held that the creation of the diary entries and the evidence relating to the phone calls was “unreasonable conduct” and made an award of costs against Mr. Deman.  The amount awarded was only £100; but the Tribunal made it clear that this was only because it understood Mr. Deman to have no significant means and said that it would otherwise have made a substantial award.

132.	Mr. Deman appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the decision of the Employment Tribunal but he has since withdrawn the appeal.  There were in fact plainly no good grounds for the appeal, which repeated allegations of bias very similar to those struck out in the first EBS case (see para. 126 above).  

133.	In his affirmation for the purpose of the present proceedings Mr. Deman claims that one of the respondents, Mr. Fisher, was “a Jewish” - the reference is to Prof. Fisher, who had a role in sifting the applications, though he was not in fact a respondent – and complains that Mr. Edge “appeared to be of Jewish origin” and apparently that for that reason he preferred Prof. Fisher’s evidence to Mr. Deman’s.  

OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY

134.	In May 2005 Mr. Deman applied to Oxford Brookes University for a position as Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in Economics.  He was short-listed but following interview was not appointed.  In the event only one post was filled, for which a Ph. D. was an advertised requirement: the successful candidate (who was Asian) had a Ph. D.

135.	On 13th September 2005 Mr. Deman commenced proceedings against the University alleging racial discrimination.  In addition to the University, he named its Chancellor, Mr. Jon Snow, as a respondent.

136.	At a pre-hearing review on 21st October 2005 in the Reading Employment Tribunal before Mr. Hardwick:

(1)	Mr. Deman was ordered to pay a deposit of £200 under rule 20 (2) of the Employment Tribunal Rules of Procedure on the basis that in so far as he alleged “ordinary” discrimination (i.e. as opposed to victimisation) his claim had little reasonable prospect of success; the Tribunal referred to the fact that the successful candidate had higher academic qualifications than Mr. Deman and was herself Asian. 

(2)	The claim against Mr. Snow was dismissed, on the basis that he had no connection whatever with recruitment matters: the connection alleged by Mr. Deman was spurious.

(3)	Various interlocutory orders were made.

At the hearing Mr. Deman was represented by Mr. Graham.

137.	Mr. Deman appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the orders summarised at (1) and (2) above and aspects of the orders made as to disclosure.  Allegations were made about Mr. Hardwick’s conduct of the hearing.  The appeal on these grounds was dismissed because Mr. Deman failed to supply the supporting affidavit required by the rules.  As regards the remaining grounds, a preliminary hearing was fixed for 14th January 2006.  Mr. Deman said that he would be unable to make that hearing because he was travelling to India; and it was accordingly re-fixed for 17th January 2006.  Mr. Deman then made a further request for an adjournment, based (again) on the “Bradford 4” grounds (see paras. 72 and 74 above), though amplified by information that a cousin of Mr. Deman’s had recently been attacked by a contract killer and that he was suffering from jet-lag.  Langstaff J. refused the adjournment and went on to dismiss the appeal.

138.	Mr. Deman applied for a review of the decision of the Appeal Tribunal.  The application was dismissed.

139.	On 1st February 2006 the claim was dismissed because Mr. Deman had failed to pay the deposit ordered on 21st October 2005.  CEM responded (a) that a cheque had in fact been sent and (b) that the victimisation claim was not affected by the strike-out.  The correspondence made offensive allegations of bias, racism and unprofessionalism against both Mr. Hardwick and Mrs. Hill, the Chairman who had made the order of 1st February.  We are not clear as to the present state of play. 

MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

140.	On 5th September 2005 Mr. Deman commenced proceedings alleging racial discrimination by Manchester Metropolitan University in failing to short-list him for two posts as Senior Lecturer/Lecturer, one in Economic and one in Finance.  The respondents were both the University itself and Mrs. Nield, its Personnel Manager.  The University’s Notice of Appearance states that the former post had been withdrawn and that Mr. Deman did not belong to a recognised accounting body, which had been specified as an essential criterion for appointment.   

141.	The claim has not reached a hearing.  As regards the interlocutory history, we would note the following:

(1)	The claim was transferred from the Manchester to the Leeds Tribunal because Mrs. Nield was a lay member of the Employment Tribunals sitting in Manchester.  CEM asked for the case to be transferred to London South because Mr. Deman regarded the Leeds office as associated in the complaint that had been made that he had made a false expenses claim (see para. 72 above).  That request was refused.

(2)	A case management discussion was fixed for 3rd November 2005.  Among the items listed for determination was an application for Mrs. Nield to be discharged because there was no arguable basis for a claim against her.  The CMD was postponed at CEM’s request.

KINGSTON UNIVERSITY

142.	On 6th October 2005 Mr. Deman commenced proceedings alleging racial discrimination by Kingston University in failing to short-list him for a post as Professor of Applied Economics.  The respondents were the University itself, Mrs. Taylor, its Personnel Manager and an un-named “chair of panel”.  The claim has not reached a hearing: we understand that it has now been stayed pending the decision in this application.  We would note that the University in its Notice of Appearance alleged that Mr. Deman “showed insufficient publication of recent research which was an essential criterion for the post”.  

(2)	OTHER CLAIMS

AUT

143.	As mentioned in para. 3 above, Mr. Deman’s various proceedings against the AUT arise principally from the union’s acts and omissions in the handling of his claims against QUB.  There are six applications, but two pairs of claims were consolidated at an early stage.

AUT 1 & 2: the first phase

144.	These claims were presented on 21st February 1996 and 25th July 1996 respectively and were subsequently consolidated.  The first alleged racial discrimination and the second alleged victimisation arising out of the first proceedings.  In both proceedings the respondents are the union and four individual officers, Mr. Brian Everett, Dr. David Triesman, Dr. Geoffrey Talbot and Dr. Joanna De Groot.  It is material to note that Dr. Triesman is an active member of the Labour Party (he was indeed at one time its General Secretary and is now a peer and minister) and that he and Dr. De Groot are Jewish.  

145. 	The claims were heard over two periods of five days each, in September 1998 and February 1999, by a Tribunal at London North chaired by Mr. Menon.  The claims were dismissed.

146. 	On 10th June 1999 Mr. Deman applied, out of time, for a review of that decision.  The terms of the application are not available, but their scope can be seen from the decision of the Chairman on the application for a review dated 14th July 1999.  It appears that most of Mr. Deman’s grounds consisted of attempts to re-argue the facts and the law, without identifying any matter which brought them within the scope of the power to review; but he also made allegations of bias.  One basis of these allegations appears to have been that the Tribunal was, or might reasonably be taken to be, biased in favour of the Union because some of its relevant employees, including but not limited to Mr. Everett, sat as lay members of Employment Tribunals.  A distinct basis was that Mr. Menon had in the past been employed by the CRE, who were supporting Mr. Deman’s claim, and had been involved in litigation against it.  The Chairman dealt with these matters in his judgment on the application and concluded:

“For the reasons stated in the foregoing paragraphs of this decision I have decided to refuse the Applicant’s application for a review of the Tribunal’s decision which was promulgated and sent to the parties on 23rd April 1999 because, in my opinion, it has no reasonable prospect of success and it was made after the expiry of the statutory time limit for seeking leave to apply for a review of the decision.”

We agree that the application for a review stood no reasonable prospect of success.  In particular, the allegations of bias seem to us plainly misconceived.

147.	In the meantime Mr. Deman appealed.  A preliminary hearing was fixed for 12th November 1999.  By letter to the Appeal Tribunal dated 30th October 1999 on paper bearing the heading of both the I-A S and Mayo-Deman Consultants, Mr. Deman applied for an adjournment of that date on the basis of a medical certificate stating that he was suffering from an “anxiety/depressive state”.  In the course of the letter he alluded to the fact that his case against the University of Manchester had recently been dismissed by the Appeal Tribunal “despite my ethnic GP’s note of sickness due [sic] racial harassment”.  The hearing was re-fixed for 12th January 2000 but Mr. Deman did not attend: it appears that his wife communicated with the Appeal Tribunal at the last moment, supplying a medical certificate to the effect that he was suffering from conjunctivitis and respiratory tract infections and that hearing also was accordingly adjourned.  After further vicissitudes which it is unnecessary to set out, the matter proceeded to a full appeal in February 2002.  The appeal was dismissed.

148.	Mr. Deman applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal further.  On 25th September 2002 that application came before Mummery LJ.  Mr. Deman had made repeated attempts in correspondence to have the hearing adjourned.  These had been unsuccessful, but Mummery LJ reluctantly acceded to them on the basis of the non-availability of Mr. Davies.  Permission was granted at a subsequent hearing, and on the eventual hearing of the full appeal on 14th March 2003 the Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and overturned the decision of the Menon tribunal essentially on the basis of inadequate reasons.  It directed a rehearing before a fresh Tribunal.

AUT 3 & 4: the decision of the Haynes Tribunal

149.	On 10th August 1999 and 14th November 1999 Mr. Deman initiated further proceedings against the AUT.  Mr Triesman was a named respondent in both proceedings and Mr Mitchell, a regional official of the union, was a named respondent in the later proceedings.  Both complaints were on the grounds of both race and sex discrimination in the union’s conduct towards Mr. Deman in a variety of matters, including but not limited to the continuing conduct of his claim against QUB.  The claims were in due course consolidated.  As analysed in the eventual decision of the Tribunal, there were 21 heads of claim.  It is unnecessary that we should set them all out, but many of them are obscure or patently trivial.    

150.	There were some delays in proceeding with the claims, initially as a result of ill-health on the part of Mr. Deman, but latterly because of the effect of the anticipated application by the Solicitor General for an order under s. 33.  So far as the latter is concerned, the Tribunal on 4th September 2000 postponed the hearing set to begin on 18th September 2000 and stayed the proceedings for one month in order to ascertain whether a s. 33 application would be made and if so with what effect.  Mr. Deman appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against that decision.  The appeal was futile because even if the Tribunal’s decision were held to have been wrong in law the postponement would have already taken effect and the stay would have been exhausted by the time that the appeal was determined.  That indeed proved to be the case: the appeal was not heard until June 2001, when it was dismissed.  On grounds which are unclear, Mr. Deman applied to the Appeal Tribunal for a review of its decision.  This was refused.  He then sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.  The matter came before Pill LJ on 1st March 2002.  He said this:

	“The grounds of appeal to this court are that the EAT erred in law in not ruling on its application for an adjournment, that they erred by refusing him leave to appeal without providing copies of documents to the lay members, that they erred in refusing him leave to appeal without hearing the application properly, that threats were made to the applicant, that the tribunal then erred in law by refusing the request for any review and then for permission to appeal to this court and that the tribunal had shown a lack of regard for the Human Rights Act.  I still fail to understand why this matter has come before this court at all.  This court is now asked to give permission to appeal against an order which is of limited duration and has long since expired.  In any event, I see no merit in the application.”  

Pill LJ went on to describe the appeal as “academic” and to repeat that there was no merit in the points which Mr. Deman was making.  

151.	The consolidated applications came before a Tribunal sitting at London Central, chaired by Mr Haynes, over ten days in September and October 2002.  Although there was no disruption to the hearing of the kind described in, for example, the University of Manchester and City University cases, we note that the whole of the first day of the hearing was spent on an unsuccessful – and in our view wholly misconceived – application on the part of Mr. Deman for the respondents’ Notice of Appearance to be struck out and for them to be debarred from defending: the application was based on alleged defaults by the respondents in agreeing bundles and exchanging statements, but the Tribunal found that there was fault on Mr. Deman’s part as well, since he had been “injecting new documents into the bundle at a very late stage” and that he had in any event suffered no prejudice.  We also note that the Tribunal was critical of the evidence adduced by Mr. Deman in at least three respects:

(1)	He called evidence from three witnesses – Dr Saha, Mr Titterington and Dr Tambyrajah - which the Tribunal found to be directed to matters which were of no relevance to his case.  

(2)	Dr Saha told the Tribunal that the witness statement prepared for him by Mr. Deman was “to some extent inaccurate”.  The Tribunal expressed concern about whether in those circumstances it should rely on the witness statements of other witnesses on which Mr. Deman sought to rely but who had not been called to give oral evidence – though, as it observed, the point did not need to be resolved since that evidence was irrelevant in any event.  

(3)	The Tribunal described Mr. Deman as having been guilty of exaggeration at several points in his evidence. 

152.	By a Reserved Decision sent to the parties on 12th November 2002 the Tribunal dismissed both claims in their entirety.  In relation to none of his heads of claim did the Tribunal find any reason to infer that the respondents had acted on ground of race or sex; and in relation to many of the heads it went further and found that the complaint was misconceived and had no reasonable prospect of success.

AUT 5: the decision of the Sigsworth Tribunal

153.	On 11th June 2001 Mr. Deman commenced a fifth set of proceedings against AUT together with Mr Triesman and two other named individual respondents.  The complaints raised covered a number of matters including – as in the earlier proceedings – complaints of race discrimination in the handling of Mr. Deman’s claim for assistance in his proceedings against QUB and the University of Greenwich.

154.	The respondents contended that the great majority of the matters raised in the claim were already the subject matter of the proceedings in AUT 3 & 4.  That issue was determined by an Employment Tribunal sitting at London Central, chaired by Mr Sigsworth, on 18th and 19th November 2002.  In all respects save one Mr. Deman’s claim was struck out.  The Tribunal held that the complaints were either out-of-time or, in so far as they were within time, had already been litigated before the Haynes Tribunal so that it would be an abuse of process to allow them to be re-litigated. 

155.	The Tribunal made an order that Mr. Deman pay costs to the respondents in the sum of £9,752.50.  As regards the out-of-time claims the Tribunal said:

“We conclude that either these claims were misconceived from the outset, as the Applicant knew they were out of time and had insufficient reasons for bring them earlier; or the continuation of these claims to the door of the Tribunal and then their effective abandonment was unreasonable.”  

So far as the matters covered by the Haynes Tribunal were concerned, the Tribunal said that it should have been clear as soon as the decision of the Haynes Tribunal was received that the overlapping claims were doomed to failure – “yet we have had one and a half days of submissions, the Applicant trying to keep unsustainable claims going”.

AUT 3-5: the Appeals

156.	Mr. Deman appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the decisions of both the Haynes and the Sigsworth Tribunals. As regards the Haynes Tribunal, in all respects but one the appeal was dismissed at a preliminary hearing on the basis that it stood no reasonable prospect of success.  The remaining point was dealt with together with the appeal from the Sigsworth hearing.  The appeal was dismissed.  

157.	Mr. Deman sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal against both decisions of the Appeal Tribunal.  At a hearing on 1st July 2004 Peter Gibson LJ refused permission on the basis that the appeals had no real prospect of success.  

AUT 1 & 2: the second phase

158.	The hearing of the AUT 1 & 2 claims remitted by the Court of Appeal following its reversal of the decision of the Menon Tribunal (see para. 148 above) commenced in London Central before a Tribunal chaired by Ms Lewzey on 7th February 2005.  Mr. Deman had the benefit of representation by Mr Davies, and some of the problems that have arisen in the past when Mr. Deman acted in person or through lay representatives were averted.  However we should note the following matters:

(1)	A witness order had been applied for by Mr. Deman against Dr Saha.  Dr Saha attended on the first day and asked for the order to be discharged.  He said that he had no knowledge material to the claim and that although several witness statements had been produced none of them truly recorded what his evidence was.  The Tribunal ruled that the matter set out in the witness statement of Dr Saha as tendered by Mr. Deman, which appeared to be that used in the Haynes Tribunal, would be of no material assistance and it discharged the order.  

(2)	The Tribunal was critical of Mr. Deman as witness.  It found that in cross-examination he did not answer the questions put to him.  

159.	By its Reserved Judgment sent to the parties on 8th April 2005 the Tribunal dismissed both claims in their entirety.

160.	Mr. Deman appealed.  The appeal was dismissed under the sift process but he applied for an oral hearing under rule 3 (10).  The hearing was listed before Judge McMullen QC.  CEM wrote to the Registrar (with copies to the Lord Chancellor and Scotland Yard) asking that the case should not proceed before Judge McMullen because he had in the past determined cases against Mr. Deman in order to protect a “Roman Catholic and Zionist Racist Mafia” and a “Labour Party/Zionist Mafia”.  When the Registrar indicated that the matter would remain listed before Judge McMullen, CEM wrote again to the President of the Appeal Tribunal, setting out extensive complaints against Judge Prophet, Judge Clark, Judge Pugsley, Judge Serota and Judge McMullen.  It said that Mr. Deman had complained to the Lord Chancellor about Judge McMullen, alleging unprofessional conduct and racial bias and hostility against himself.   When the matter came on for hearing, Mr Davies on behalf of Mr. Deman invited Judge McMullen to recuse himself in the light of the fact that he was the subject of a complaint to the Lord Chancellor.  Judge McMullen felt obliged to accede to that request. (We note that his decision in this regard has since been disapproved by another division of the Appeal Tribunal – see Ansar v. Lloyds TSB Bank plc UKEAT/0609/05.)  The application was re-listed before Lady Smith on 21st November 2005.  She dismissed the appeal on all grounds save one, as to which she asked for clarification from the Tribunal.  The matter was to be re-listed for a further hearing following receipt of that clarification; but so far as we are aware that has not yet occurred.

AUT 6 

161.	On 2nd December 2002 Mr. Deman commenced a sixth set of proceedings against the AUT and two named officers alleging racial discrimination.  At a pre-hearing review on 14th March 2006 the respondents submitted that the claim was simply re-litigating issues determined in the earlier proceedings.  The Chairman, Miss Potter, was not prepared to strike the claim out on that ground; but she accepted that it had little reasonable prospect of success, and Mr. Deman was ordered to pay a deposit of £250.  Mr. Deman gave evidence that he was on incapacity benefit and income support and had credit card debts of over £20,000, in addition to unpaid costs orders.  

NATFHE

162.	On 2nd December 2002 Mr. Deman started proceedings in the Employment Tribunal alleging racial discrimination by NATFHE in its decision not to afford him financial support in his proceedings against the University of Greenwich.  We have no information about the interlocutory history, but the claim was dismissed by a Tribunal sitting at London Central, chaired by Mr. Charlton, in a Judgment sent to the parties on 28th April 2006.  The Tribunal saw no basis for any inference that the Union’s decision – which it described as “not at all surprising” - was taken on racial grounds.  We note that at the commencement of the hearing Mr. Deman applied for the respondents’ Notice of Appearance to be struck out on the basis of alleged procedural defaults: that application was dismissed.  We also note that he asked members of the Tribunal to declare whether a large number of circumstances applied to them which he regarded as grounds for recusal.  These included membership of the Labour party and acquaintance with the Regional Chairman or one of a number of (unidentified) Chairmen about whom he had outstanding complaints. 

NRG

163.	This claim was commenced on 16th August 2005.  It arises out of the fact that Mr. Deman applied to become a lay member of the Employment Tribunals but was not short-listed.  He claims that the decision was taken because of his race, alternatively because of his various complaints about the Employment Tribunals Service, for which the DTI is statutorily responsible.  The Notice of Appearance denies discrimination or victimisation and says that Mr. Deman was not short-listed simply because he scored too low on the preliminary sift.  The claim has not, so far as we are aware, been determined.    

(C)	DECISION

164.	We take separately the two grounds relied on by the Attorney General.

GROUND (a): VEXATIOUS PROCEEDINGS

165.	We start by considering Mr. Deman’s claims against the academic institutions who failed to appoint or short-list him.  There are 31 cases of this type (relating to nineteen institutions) - though if each case was analysed into its constituent “causes of action”, by job and respondent, the number of claims would be several times that.  Of those 31 cases, six are pending (those against Greenwich; Glasgow Caledonian; University of Wales, Aberystwyth; EBS (second case); Manchester Metropolitan; and Kingston), and we ignore those for present purposes (subject to one particular point about Greenwich – see para. 172 below).  Eight have been settled (though involving only four institutions - Sheffield (Sheffield 3 only), King’s, University of Wales, Swansea and Imperial), and three were dismissed without a substantive hearing (London Business School, Bradford 4 and Oxford Brookes (save as regards the victimisation claim)).  Of the remaining fourteen which have gone to a hearing, the proceedings against all but two institutions - ESE and Nottingham (though in the latter case Mr. Deman’s success spanned two claims) – have failed wholly; and Mr. Deman’s success in both the ESE and (particularly) the Nottingham cases was very partial and had the unusual features which we have identified above.  That is a very poor success rate – and the disproportion between success and failure is much more striking if one considers individual claims as opposed to Tribunal applications.  (It is true that in one or two of the cases there are still pending appeals, but that does not mean that the cases must be excluded from our consideration: see Attorney General v. Wheen (above).)

166.	We accept that it cannot be straightforwardly concluded simply from that tally alone that all or most of the unsuccessful claims had no real prospect of success and were therefore at least potentially vexatious.  The way that the discrimination legislation, as glossed in the case-law (see most recently Igen Ltd. v. Wong [2005] ICR 931), operates in the case of disappointed applicants for employment can make it difficult to say, in any given case, that an applicant has no real prospect of success.  He or she may not have the evidence with which to make a reliable assessment of the reasons for his non-appointment.   In some circumstances the mere fact of non-selection (whether at the stage of short-listing or actual appointment) may raise a case to answer; and even if the questionnaire procedure is deployed it will often only be when the evidence is heard and tested that it can become apparent that the impugned decision was not taken to any extent on racial grounds.  The position is a fortiori where the claim is for victimisation, if it is established that the institution knew of the protected act: it may not always be easy for the decision-takers to demonstrate that the knowledge in question played no part in their decision. 

167.	Nevertheless, on the facts of this particular case we believe that in bringing these proceedings Mr. Deman can be said to have acted vexatiously, and to have done so habitually and persistently, for the following reasons.

168.	The starting-point is that Mr. Deman’s chances of success in relation to the great majority of the claims made were, and should objectively have been judged to be, very poor, even having regard to the considerations acknowledged in para. 166 above.  It is necessary to distinguish between the claims for “primary” discrimination and victimisation. 

 -	As regards primary discrimination, in no case did Mr. Deman have any worthwhile positive evidence to suggest that the decision in question was taken on racial grounds.  Nor was there any statistical evidence supporting him: indeed in some cases the evidence was the other way, in that the short-list included other members of ethnic minorities or the successful candidate was himself or herself from an ethnic minority.  He was obliged to rely on the inference to be drawn from the fact of his non-selection/non-appointment and the fact that he was Indian. Whether that even began to support an inference of discrimination would depend to a considerable extent on the strength of his candidature.  In the case of a large number of the posts in respect of which he claimed his candidature was in fact very weak.  Although – as his appointment to the University of Greenwich demonstrates - his CV up to the early 1990s was sufficiently good to make him potentially appointable to posts at Lecturer and Senior Lecturer level in some types of institution (though possibly not the older and more research-based institutions), it became less and less impressive thereafter.  He did not add to his publications; he did not obtain a Ph. D.; and following his dismissal by Greenwich he could not point to recent teaching or other relevant experience.  His applications for professorships appear, on the evidence, to have been always unrealistic.  In several cases he applied for jobs for which he was, on the published criteria, simply not qualified (particularly those requiring a Ph. D.).  We refer in particular to the findings made in the Manchester, Bradford 1-3, Nottingham, City University, Leeds Metropolitan and SOAS cases – see paras. 44, 52, 64, 68, 93, 105, 112, and 131 above – but a similar point can be detected, though less definitively, in several of the other cases.  In those circumstances an objective observer would have recognised that the chances that a Tribunal would draw an inference of discrimination were very slim; and if that was not apparent at first it should have become increasingly clear as his tally of defeats rose.  In no case did the Tribunal find any difficulty with the primary discrimination claim, and in varying degrees that was made clear in the Judgments.  The “expert” evidence which Mr. Deman tried to call in some cases to bolster the argument that he was appointable was obviously flawed: see in particular para. 64 (5) above.

-	As regards victimisation, his history of previous claims plainly created a prima facie case with regard to some of his claims, and some Tribunals found this aspect, understandably, more difficult.  But again it should have been apparent that Tribunals were likely to be highly resistant to any attempt by an applicant in Mr. Deman’s position to base a victimisation case simply on that he had brought multiple complaints: see the observations of the Tribunal in Bradford 3 quoted at para. 68 (2) above.  Tribunals were always likely to look very critically at the facts of the particular case and would not be satisfied by a victimisation case based purely on Mr. Deman’s asserted general notoriety.  Thus, while some claims of victimisation (most obviously the Nottingham case) may well have been viable, others should still have been judged to have little prospect of success.  Yet a victimisation claim was made indiscriminately in virtually every case, irrespective of the individual facts or of any reason to suppose that the respondents knew anything of his history.

169.	Thus some cases should always have been judged very likely to fail in their entirety, and others only to have a reasonable chance in relation to the victimisation aspect – yet Mr. Deman invariably fired with both barrels.  Proceedings may be vexatiously instituted if major elements in them are vexatious, even if some parts of the claim may be legitimate.  Other claims embodied in some of the proceedings which should also have been judged to have had no real prospect of success were those against many of the individual respondents and those based on sex discrimination (Bradford 1 and University of Wales, Swansea); but we do not dwell on these since they are inevitably less central to our reasoning.

170.	Mr. Deman’s persistence in asserting discrimination in these cases reflects the characteristic described by the Tribunal in the first Greenwich case quoted at para. 78 above, which reinforces our own impression gained from reading Mr. Deman’s correspondence and affidavits: it is his practice to assert racial discrimination as a response to any decision or action adverse to him.  In other words, Mr. Deman’s unsuccessful claims are not to be regarded simply as a series of particular misjudgments or “mis-predictions” as to whether he had a viable case.  They are the product of an obsession that he is a victim of racial discrimination which exists without reference to the evidence in any particular case.  (In this connection we should note an argument advanced by Mr. Deman to the effect that he has brought claims for discrimination in relation to only a fraction of the rejections which he has encountered.  But he could not practicably sue in every case, and we see no sign that the distinction between the rejected applications which led to claims and those which did not reflects any deliberate assessment on his part of whether the decisions in question were the result of racial discrimination). 

171.	It follows from the same starting-point that even where there was a reasonable prospect of succeeding in a victimisation claim, the chances of any substantial award were slight because – for the reasons already given - the likely finding was that Mr. Deman would have been very unlikely to have been appointed even if those illegitimate considerations had been rigorously excluded.  This means that the effort required not only on the part of the respondents but on the part of Mr. Deman himself was wholly disproportionate to any tangible reward.

172.	We believe that it is in fact right to go rather further.  We believe that in making the applications in question for posts at the respondent institutions Mr. Deman was decreasingly concerned actually with achieving appointment and increasingly concerned with pursuing a campaign to demonstrate what be believed was discrimination in the world of higher education – both generally against members of ethnic minorities and specifically against him (by what he perceived to be a group of people associated with or influenced by his enemies at QUB and – latterly - the Universities of Bradford and Greenwich).  This conclusion can be derived from the fact that he continued to make applications in which he had little prospect of succeeding (see above) and to institutions such as Sheffield and Bradford where he cannot in practice have expected or wished for appointment (cf. para. 68 (3) above) and, most obviously, to the University of Greenwich from which he had been dismissed (rightly, as the Tribunal had found) for misconduct; also from the perfunctory nature of his applications (see para. 131, but there are indications in other cases that the deficiencies there identified were not unique).  But it is also an inference which we would draw from his conduct and statements as a whole.  No doubt in principle Mr. Deman wanted to be employed, but in practice that goal was becoming increasingly secondary to other goals that he believed could be achieved through litigation.  At a general level those goals are the exposure of bias and discrimination in the world of higher education and in the Tribunal system.  But we also detect a desire to pursue individuals (such as Dr. Cameron) against whom he has an animus or persons representing interests that he believes are hostile to him (such as Baroness Blackstone, as representing the Labour party).  The truth is that the conduct of his various claims has been Mr. Deman’s principal activity in the years in question.  From 2002 onwards his cases have been before the Employment Tribunal on 210 days, on almost all of which he will have been present personally and more often than not actually conducting the case; and in addition to that he has had to devote time to preparation, correspondence and appearing in the Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal.  It seems to us that litigation has to a considerable extent become an end in itself.

173.	The unsuccessful proceedings brought against these institutions were liable to, as they did, cause enormous inconvenience, harassment and expense to the respondents. We need not elaborate this point, which will be sufficiently apparent from the narrative above.

174.	Taken together, these factors in our view justify the conclusion that these proceedings were brought vexatiously.  We were referred to the judgment of Lord Bingham LCJ in Attorney General v. Barker (above), in which he said, at para. 19:

“…“Vexatious” is a familiar term in legal parlance.  The hallmark of a vexatious proceeding is in my judgment that it has little or no basis in law (or at least no discernible basis); that whatever the intention of the proceeding may be, its effect is to subject the defendant to inconvenience, harassment and expense out of all proportion to any gain likely to accrue to the claimant; and that it involves an abuse of the process of the court, meaning by that a use of the court process for a purpose or in a way which is significantly different from the ordinary and proper use of the court process.”

That passage should not be treated as a statutory definition: vexatious conduct can take many forms, though it is not difficult to recognise.  But the key elements identified by Lord Bingham are amply apparent in the proceedings brought by Mr. Deman as reviewed above.  It may not be strictly accurate to say that Mr. Deman’s claims had little or no basis “in law” – as discussed above, discrimination cases of this kind are generally fact-dependent; and we have recognised that some of the victimisation claims which ultimately did not succeed may nevertheless have been arguable.  But the essential point (as regards this element) is that, objectively viewed, the great mass of the claims brought had little chance of success.  

175.	Mr. Davies submitted that we should not find Mr. Deman to have acted vexatiously unless we found him to have acted in bad faith, and he relied on some observations of Sir Hugh Griffiths in the National Industrial Relations Court in Marler (E.T.) Ltd. v. Robertson [1974] ICR 72 in relation to the meaning of “vexatious” in the (then) rules relating to the award of costs in the Industrial Tribunal.  We respectfully agree with the judgment of this Tribunal in Attorney General v. Bruce (above) that it is not necessary for the purpose of s. 33 to establish subjective bad faith.  Typical “bad faith” states of mind such as spite or the pursuit of an ulterior motive may be highly relevant to the question of vexatiousness, but a finding of vexatiousness can, we are sure, properly be made when the character of the litigant’s conduct, objectively viewed, is such as to constitute an abuse of the process.  That seems to us to follow from Lord Bingham’s language says in Barker – “whatever the intention”.  It also seems right both in principle, because the ultimate aim of the provisions is not to punish vexatious claimants but to prevent the prejudice and cost to defendants and tribunals of having to deal with repeated claims that have no real prospect of success; and equally as a matter of policy, since the determination of the subjective state of mind of a vexatious litigant would be often an uncertain and very unsatisfactory exercise.  But the outcome of this debate is not in any event determinative, since our reasoning incorporates (at para. 172) an element which we think counts for present purposes as “bad faith”: while we have not found that in bringing these proceedings Mr. Deman has been motivated by spite or dishonesty (though there has been an element of both in his conduct of them – see below) we do find that he has been bringing proceedings otherwise than primarily with a view to recovering compensation or vindicating his rights in a particular case.   

176.	We do not conceive it to be necessary to identify which of the various cases brought (i.e. actual applications to the Employment Tribunal) were or were not individually vexatious.  A conclusion that Mr. Deman has habitually and persistently instituted vexatious proceedings can in a case of this kind be made without such particularisation.  However, we would if necessary say that every one of the cases which failed was vexatious: the fact that it may have included an arguable victimisation claim (or in some other respect not have included one or more of the features identified above) would not be enough to alter its character. But even if one or more cases could be altogether excluded - or, for example, if the view were taken that Mr. Deman’s litigation only became vexatious when his litigation became habitual - that would not affect our overall conclusion.

177.	It makes no difference to this reasoning that Mr. Deman achieved the limited success that he did in the ESE and Nottingham cases or that four institutions were prepared to settle his claims.  We do not in fact believe that the willingness of some respondents to settle can be taken as an indicator that the cases in question had a reasonable prospect of success and were not vexatious: the trouble and expense to which a determined claimant – perhaps particularly a vexatious claimant – can put a respondent can create a powerful pressure to settle irrespective of the merits of the claim.  But even if all these claims should be viewed as legitimate, it does not follow that the remainder were also.  A litigant who persistently brings ill-founded claims which would otherwise be considered vexatious cannot avoid the label simply by sometimes bringing legitimate claims. 

178.	In reaching our conclusion we have excluded from consideration the conduct of Mr. Deman in the course of the proceedings.  On a strict view at least (though see para. 188 below), the question for the purpose of ground (a) is whether the institution of the proceedings in question is vexatious; and the fact that they may subsequently have been conducted vexatiously is as such irrelevant – though it may afford evidence relevant to the question, e.g., of the claimant’s purpose. 

179.	That conclusion is sufficient for present purposes, but it is in fact equally justifiable on another basis.  S. 33 (1) (a) refers to the institution of vexatious proceedings “in the Appeal Tribunal”.  It seems to us that the “proceedings” in question must include – indeed must principally be – appeals.  The Employment Appeal Tribunal does have a very limited original jurisdiction, helpfully identified in para. T 1405 of Harvey on Industrial Relations and Employment Law.  It is not clear that any of this jurisdiction existed when s. 33 was enacted, but it is in any event inconceivable that the intended reference is only to the institution of original proceedings of this arcane nature, or that the section was not intended to provide any sanction against litigants who instituted vexatious appeals from decisions of the Employment Tribunals (cf. Attorney General v. Jones, though the particular point there was different).  Although the language is awkward, there is nothing outlandish in describing the institution of an appeal as the institution of “proceedings” in the Appeal Tribunal.  Both Mr. Linden and Mr. Davies were agreed that vexatious appeals came within the terms of s. 33, though Mr. Davies was inclined to submit that they did so as “vexatious applications” rather than “vexatious proceedings”.

180.	On that basis, we are satisfied that Mr. Deman habitually and persistently instituted such proceedings in the Appeal Tribunal.  As appears from our review, he has repeatedly brought appeals to the Appeal Tribunal which have been dismissed at the sift stage or at a preliminary hearing as raising no arguable point of law or which were otherwise plainly misconceived: see paras. 16, 36 (4), 40, 43 (16), 57, 65, 67 (3), 71, 83 (4), 101, 107, 108, 122, 137, 150 and 156 above.  (And there are several other appeals which were allowed to proceed on one or more grounds but where other grounds were dismissed at the preliminary stage.)  We do not say that the bringing of an appeal which is dismissed at a preliminary stage as raising no arguable point of law is ipso facto vexatious; but in our view most at least of the appeals identified above are properly so characterised.  In addition to the fact that they had no basis in law, the number of the appeals, the nature of the allegations made in them (particularly the patently unfounded and indiscriminate allegations of bias), and the fact that they were, at least in some of Mr. Deman’s cases, made as a virtually automatic response to any adverse decision (even where nothing of value could be achieved) combine in our view to render them plainly vexatious.  Thus even if we were wrong in our conclusion that Mr. Deman has habitually and persistently instituted vexatious proceedings in the Employment Tribunal, ground (a) would still be established.

181.	We have not found it necessary for the purpose of this part of our decision to decide whether all or any of Mr. Deman’s proceedings against the AUT in the Employment Tribunal (as opposed to appeals) can be described as vexatiously instituted.  We are bound to say that the decisions of the Haynes and Lewzey tribunals strongly suggest that there was never any real basis for the inferences of discrimination which Mr. Deman invited the Tribunals to make; but it would take a fuller analysis of the decisions than is justified for us to decide whether the claims could properly be described as misconceived, particularly when the Haynes tribunal itself declined to make an order for costs.  The Sigsworth tribunal did of course make such an order in AUT 5, but on a rather particular basis – and Mr. Davies tells us that as regards at least part of the conduct criticised Mr. Deman was acting on his advice.  In those circumstances we are reluctant to make a finding of vexatiousness.  But the very least we can say is that there is nothing in the AUT litigation to alter the view which we take of the litigation against the academic institutions.

GROUND (b): VEXATIOUS APPLICATIONS

182.	Although on that basis no decision is necessary on ground (b), we should nevertheless consider it in case we are wrong about ground (a).  In our view the history recited above plainly shows that Mr. Deman has persistently and habitually made vexatious applications in both the Employment Tribunal and the Appeal Tribunal.  It would be wearisome to list every one of the applications which was, or was arguably, vexatious.  We confine ourselves to four types.

183.	First, we are satisfied that Mr. Deman has persistently and habitually made vexatious applications for adjournments to proceedings in both the Employment Tribunal and the Appeal Tribunal.  The applications have been vexatious because they have been made on grounds which were inadequate, confusing, and sometimes spurious or disingenuous and because they have caused serious delay and disruption to the cases in which they occurred.  The most well-established instances are:

-	the application for an adjournment made in the London Business School case, partly on medical grounds but unsupported by medical evidence (paras. 28-29);

-	the application in the University of Manchester case, where the Tribunal held that “the medical card” had been played in bad faith (para. 46 – see also para. 43 (9)-(15));

-	the application made in Bradford 4 based on “confused and contradictory medical information” which Mr. Hildebrand held to have been deliberately misleading (paras. 72-75);

-	the saga relating to the attempts to have the City University case adjourned, where Mr. Deman was held to have acted disingenuously, and where there was also considerable doubt about the genuineness of the medical evidence relied on (paras. 100-104).

In those cases the Tribunal found, expressly or by necessary implication, that Mr. Deman’s conduct in relation to the application had been unreasonable.   But there are many other examples of applications by Mr. Deman for an adjournment where there are strong reasons to doubt the genuineness and/or adequacy of the grounds advanced – see, e.g., paras. 18 (4), 36, 51 (3), 58 (1), 62, 63 (1), 67 (1) & (3), 71, 83 (3), 85, 89-91, 95-96, 128 and 147.  While if any of these examples were considered in isolation it might not be possible to be sure that the application was vexatious, when the entire history is looked at the conclusion is overwhelming that all or most of them were.  There may have been individual cases where the application could be justified, but it is in our view clear that there was a pattern of Mr. Deman making last-minute applications for adjournments on spurious and/or wholly inadequate grounds.  As regards the medical grounds advanced by Mr. Deman (which are of course only part of the story), it is not necessary for the purpose of this conclusion for us to say that they were entirely bogus.  We are content to accept that Mr. Deman has suffered from depression and perhaps related mental ill-health, and this may to a greater or lesser extent have produced physical symptoms; but we have no doubt from the history reviewed above that these symptoms were frequently exaggerated or deployed opportunistically in order to seek an adjournment where Mr. Deman was in fact fit to conduct his cases.  It is important to appreciate the disruption caused by these applications.  When they were successful they disrupted the Tribunal’s lists and the other parties’ arrangements and, more importantly, prolonged the period over which Mr. Deman’s allegations hung over the heads of the respondents.  But even when they were unsuccessful their proper determination absorbed time and effort more properly devoted to the consideration of the substantive issues.  

184.	Secondly, Mr. Deman’s applications for witness orders were habitually and persistently vexatious.  He applied, sometimes repeatedly, for orders requiring the attendance of witnesses whose evidence was irrelevant and unnecessary, and often without a proper reason to believe that the witness would be prepared to give the evidence which he wished to put forward: on at least one occasion he deliberately misled the Tribunal as to the willingness of the witnesses in question to give evidence.  The paradigm instance is the repeated applications for witness orders against Judge Prophet (and latterly Judge Meeran); but there are many others, including the applications for orders against witnesses who had not in fact made the statements attributed to them.  We refer to paras. 18 (1), 43 (2)-(5), 58 (3), 66(2), 68, 102 (day 2), 104 (4), 111 (1), 115, 119 and 158 (1) (as to which see also para. 151 (2)).

185.	Thirdly, we regard Mr. Deman’s applications to a large number of Tribunals (both Employment Tribunals and Appeal Tribunals) to recuse themselves (and/or for transfer to another Region) on grounds of bias as vexatious: see paras. 43 (7)-(10) and (19), 73, 102 (day 1), 117, 118, 120, 126, 160 and 162.  The applications were in our view invariably ill-founded, as indeed in many of the cases the Appeal Tribunal held.  Mr. Deman would typically allege bias either on the basis simply that the Chairman or Tribunal in question had ruled against him or on the basis of a suspected association with the protagonists in the supposed campaign against him or of racial origins.  

186.	Fourthly, we regard Mr. Deman’s habit of requiring reviews or reconsiderations of issues already decided as vexatious – see paras. 20, 30, 43 (1), 43 (5) (e), 43 (9) (b)-(c), 43 (17), 53, 58 (2), 59, 104 (3), 119, 120, 121, 138, 146 and 150.

187.	It is an important feature of these applications that they are common to a large number of cases.  We have been alive to the danger of giving too much weight to a few egregious instances of unreasonable applications, in particular those which happen to be very fully documented – as in the Manchester and City University cases.  The possibility has to be considered that the chemistry between Mr. Deman on the one hand and a Chairman or Chairmen with a particular style on the other may have led to behaviour on the part of Mr. Deman which was not characteristic of his overall conduct.  And certainly some cases of Mr. Deman’s cases, even where he was not represented by counsel, seem to have gone more smoothly than others.  But what is striking is how similar problems have arisen over a wide range of cases, with a wide range of Chairmen (including some who went on to find for Mr. Deman on some substantive points).  The particularly fully-recorded cases, like Manchester and City University, are useful because they enable us to appreciate in detail Mr. Deman’s modus operandi, but there is every reason to believe that similar behaviour lies behind some of the more briefly-recorded decisions.  For that reason our view would not be affected even if the result of the pending appeals in the Manchester case is to undermine the particular criticisms made by the Tribunal in that case.

188.	We should add that we found the structure of s. 33, with its strict distinction between the institution of vexatious proceedings and the making of vexatious applications, somewhat artificial.  As the present case illustrates, there may well be classes of vexatious conduct which are difficult to fit neatly within either of the statutory grounds – in particular, not every instance of vexatious conduct in the course of proceedings takes the form of a vexatious application proprement dit.  The equivalent statutory powers as regards High Court proceedings (which go back to the Vexatious Proceedings Act 1896) were originally limited to the bringing of vexatious proceedings.  The power to make an order where there had been vexatious applications was introduced when s. 42 of the Supreme Court Act 1981 was enacted, but the researches of counsel were unable to establish the background to this change.  It seems to us that the provisions should be interpreted so far as possible to give a power to restrain the bringing of proceedings where the claimant has been habitually guilty of vexatious conduct of any kind in connection with proceedings; but this view is not necessary to our decision in the present case, where even on the most literal approach both grounds are in our view made out.

DISCRETION

189.	If Mr. Deman continues to behave in the way described above, in relation to grounds (a) and (b), he is likely to continue to subject both respondents and the Tribunal system to burdens which it is wrong that they should have to shoulder.  We are therefore disposed to make a restriction of proceedings order.  That would indeed be our view even if only ground (b) were made out.  In such a case – i.e. of habitual and persistent vexatious applications in the context of otherwise proper proceedings – a restriction of proceedings order might be less obviously proportionate; but the section plainly contemplates the making of an order in an appropriate case even of this kind, and the history of vexatious applications by Mr. Deman is in our view sufficiently serious to justify it.

190.	That conclusion is reinforced if – as Mr. Linden submits, and as we agree - it is legitimate at this stage of our reasoning to take into account also other aspects of Mr. Deman’s conduct which do not, strictly speaking, fall within the description of “vexatious applications”, in particular:

-	the prolongation of proceedings not only by making vexatious applications but by excessive time taken in evidence, generally on irrelevant or peripheral topics – see, e.g. paras. 43 (12), 68 (4), and 112;

-	the intemperate and offensive correspondence conducted by himself and his associated entities, CEM and I-AS – the examples of this are too numerous to need to be particularised;

-	the rude behaviour of himself and his associates (particularly Mr. Graham) in the course of Tribunal proceedings – we accept that this has only occurred occasionally, when Mr. Deman or Mr. Graham has lost his temper, and particularly where they and a particular Chairman have rubbed one another up the wrong way, but that does not excuse it – see paras. 36 (3), 43 (5) (d), 45 and 104 (1); 

-	his wanton allegations of bias and racism against lawyers, Tribunal staff and Tribunal members – again, these are too many to require enumeration. 

We place less weight on the last three of those items.  In the excitement of litigation, parties do sometimes say and do things which they should not, and Tribunals should not be over-sensitive.  But there are limits to what can be tolerated: Mr. Linden drew our attention to the plainly genuine tone of outrage in the observations of one of the lay members responding to the bias allegations in the EBS case, and we should not under-estimate the hurtfulness of allegations of racism even when addressed to a professional tribunal which can be expected to have a broad back.  In any event there is a real risk that misconduct of this kind makes it more difficult for the Tribunal to do, and be seen to do, justice to both parties.

191.	We have considered whether, whatever his past behaviour, there are any good grounds for believing that Mr. Deman may in fact moderate his conduct in the future so that the making of a restriction of proceedings order is unnecessary or disproportionate.  Mr. Davies suggested that the most serious misconduct attributed to Mr. Deman dated back several years and that both the volume of his claims and the intemperateness of his conduct and correspondence had moderated recently.  He submitted that the present application would act as a warning to Mr. Deman, and that the making of a restriction of proceedings order would indeed be disproportionate.  But we were offered no concrete assurances, nor does Mr. Deman’s affirmation for the purpose of the present proceedings contain any note of apology or recognition of past unreasonable behaviour.  We see no reliable indication that Mr. Deman has changed his ways to any significant extent.  We have indeed noted that, as one would expect, the problems associated with Mr. Deman’s cases have been much less where he has instructed counsel and solicitors – his ability to do so depending, as we understand it, on the availability of funds from his various settlements; but there is no indication that he intends, or has the means, exclusively to instruct counsel in future.

192.	We will accordingly make a restriction of proceedings order.  We see no ground for giving the order a finite term.  That might be an appropriate course if there were reason to believe that the occasion for further vexatious litigation would disappear after some identifiable future point; but we see no such point here.