Wilsons Solicitors have lost the latest stage of their legal fight to stop a former managing partner bringing a whistleblower claim.
The Court of Appeal held, in Wilsons v Roberts [2018] EWCA Civ 52, that Andrew Roberts can pursue his former firm for £3.4m in compensation.
Roberts, a member of Wilsons Solicitors LLP, was the managing partner. Following a dispute over his investigation of a complaint against the senior partner, the other members voted to remove Roberts from his post.
Roberts claimed the others had repudiated the Members’ Agreement, and that their conduct made his continued membership intolerable. The members denied this and asked him to return to work. He declined, and brought a claim for ‘compensation for detriment suffered by a worker as a result of the making of protected disclosures’, under the ‘whistleblowing’ legislation.
However, his claim was struck out on the basis it had no reasonable prospect of success due to a previous High Court decision on the doctrine of repudiatory breach in a dispute over LLP membership.
Delivering his judgment in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Singh said the employment tribunal judge ‘moved seamlessly from “the element of the claimant's claim that relates to the termination of his membership” to “the losses that flow from that termination”. The employment tribunal struck both of those elements of the claim out. In fact the second element did not necessarily fall along with the first’.
Mike Parker, managing partner of Wilsons Solicitors said: ‘The case is ongoing and we will continue to defend it vigorously. Mr Roberts was asked to reconsider his role as managing partner due to differences of opinion over the firm’s business plans and management styles.’
