Veale Wasbrough loses 'Basil Fawlty' discrimination claims for RCGP

Readers' comments (12)

• Employment Lawyer | 21-Mar-2012 12:30 pm

  Cracking result for the firm.
  Not only do they lose to a litigant in person who worked as a porter rather than settling an obvious losing case, they then get a nice write up in the press about how they lost, thus causing the client massive embarassment and even dragging the Royal Family into it.

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• Rural Bliss | 21-Mar-2012 12:58 pm

  Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau? Rubbish!
  There is and will only ever be one Inspector Clouseau, the magnificent Peter Sellers.

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• Anonymous | 21-Mar-2012 1:05 pm

  Why is this reported as an alleged failure by the advocate (who I don't know from Adam) which seems to follow the increasingly sensationalist approach to trial reporting. Cases are often now reported as "battles" between advisers rather than battles between the parties. If the RCGP were acting as reported a finding of discrimination sounds justified and surely that is the real story. We have no idea what advice Mr Hasley gave to his client or how the witnesses performed before the Tribunal. Losing at a hearing does not mean that an adviser has not done a good job.

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• Anonymous | 21-Mar-2012 2:15 pm

  I would like to strongly echo the comment by Anon at 1:05pm; in fact, I meant to post a similar comment against another article a couple of weeks ago which framed a trial outcome in terms of one advocate 'defeating' another, as if the evidence before the court was of no consequence compared to the relative merits of the advisers.
  I've never heard of Mr Hasley or his firm, but that byline seems extremely unfair as it conveys the impression of some sort of personal failure on his part. High time the Lawyer cut down on this sort of needless sensationalism.
  Also, @Employment Lawyer, since when was it up to the firm being instructed as to whether to settle a case?

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• Anonymous | 21-Mar-2012 2:47 pm

  Why has The Lawyer decided to report this particular case over any other? There are tons of employment tribunal claims heard every day, often (obviously) involving represented parties losing - is there to be a special weekly supplement shaming the employment lawyers who fail on behalf of their clients? I echo the previous two comments in being slightly outraged on behalf of the lawyer involved in this, who I also don't know, at the personal nature of the report. Also if the discrimination did not lead to the dismissal, which seems to be the case as the claimant lost the unfair dismissal claim, compensation will be limited to injury to feelings which could be a relatively small amount (very possibly below the amount the claimant would have settled for pre-hearing).

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• Anonymous | 21-Mar-2012 3:18 pm

  The press release may have come from the firm! Why else would anyone know or care about this case?
  Anonymous | 21-Mar-2012 2:15 pm
  In ET cases where publicity is likely to be bad, merits not so good and costs unrecoverable, a good lawyer will damn well make sure his client forces a settlement.

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• Anonymous | 21-Mar-2012 3:24 pm

  But the Porter 's name is really "Basile" - Appadoure Basile - what is he complaining about? He was correctly addressed and I do not see any grounds for his claim. May be he is not as clueless as his work colleagues thought. One minute a curchgoer decided he was prevented from playing football by the angels and now we have a Mr Basile who decided he was out of Fawlty Towers and he is about to receive a five-figure compo. Now I am sure I have been making the wrong moves all my life!

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• Anonymous | 21-Mar-2012 4:08 pm

  I agree with the posts above - The Lawyer has got into a really ridiculous habit of depicting every trial as "combat" between the lawyers. It repeats the same cliches over and over again : XQC "goes head to head" with "heavyweight" YQC, or "squares up". It is not only sensationalist and offensive, but also shows an ignorance of the legal process which is quite surprising from a trade paper. Can we stop this and grow up a bit now?

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• Mary | 21-Mar-2012 4:39 pm

  Let's see, it's a website about the legal profession trying to make really boring legal judgements interesting to its readers. I'm no media expert, and doubt any of my esteemed friends on this comments post are either, but I suspect they have to find a way of making it interesting. It seems to me that most newspapers etc use this tactic to draw readers in. Otherwise you'd read a headline that said "some terribly tedious and ordinary QC defended a client against claims from another terribly tedious and ordinary QC's client and one side convinced the judge that they were right on some, but not all, of the points" Who's going to read that? And trials are 'combats' between lawyers - do you speak about 'winning' a case or not?

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• Rob | 27-Mar-2012 2:03 pm

  It's somehow appropriate, given the claims, that the defendant's patron should be none other than Bonehead.

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