The claimant in these proceedings had been dismissed by his employer for he alleges making protected disclosures. His claim failed but journalists attended the hearing and copies of witness statements were available for inspection. Seven weeks after the judgment a Guardian reporter requested sight of other case documents, citing public interest in concerns of possible money laundering by the employer. The ET ordered that the ET1 and ET3 be provided but not the other documents sought.

The appellants appealed on 3 grounds: the Tribunal failed to properly define the scope of the open justice principle; the Tribunal's decision that granting the documents would not advance the open justice principle was perverse and; the Tribunal's evaluation as to the proper balance between open justice and the countervailing factors tending away from disclosure was clearly wrong. HHJ Tayler, after reviewing the case law including Dring, allows the appeal concluding at [90] “the employment tribunal’s conclusion that the open justice principle was not strongly engaged was fundamentally flawed”. Nor, in these days of digital bundles, was there any reason that the documents could not be provided easily and the ET’s decision here was perverse.