Bangert, R (on the application of) v South Bank University

The claimant, now 38 years old, challenges the decision of the Deputy Vice Chancellor and Secretary to the Board of Governors of South Bank University dated 5 December 2001. By that letter (Claimant’s bundle 339-346) Karen Stephenson, Secretary to the Board of Governors, informed the claimant that he had no right of appeal against the decision dated 8 November 2001 of the Deputy Vice Chancellor and Registrar, Mr Rhodri Phillips, terminating the claimant’s studentship and excluding him from the University (329). The letter informed the claimant that: “The university can no longer tolerate your behaviour and the disruption that you cause.” Having rejected the claimant’s appeal, the letter of 5 December from Karen Stephenson confirmed that the original decision of the 8 November “must stand” and that “the University considers this matter is now closed” (346).

In his decision Mr Rhodri Phillips accepted the recommendations of Dr Ruth Farwell, the Dean of Academic Affairs, contained in a report dated 1 November 2001. Although the application for judicial review formally challenges the decision dated 5 December, the challenge is in reality to, and only to, Dr Farwell’s report.

Dr Farwell conducted an investigation into some of a number of allegations made against the claimant by Professor Bridge, the Head of the School of Electronic and Information Engineering. It is agreed that all the documents behind Dividers C, D and E of the defendant’s bundle other than C112-113 and D14-42 were available to her for the investigation. There is a dispute about whether C115A (to which I turn later) was available to Dr Farwell. She had other documents, to some of which I shall make reference.

The claimant seeks to support his case by reliance on over 614 pages of material (“Claimant’s bundle”) much of it printed using a small font. A considerable quantity of that material was not provided to Dr Farwell. I made it clear during the hearing that it was the responsibility of Counsel for the claimant to ensure that the relevant documents were brought to my attention. Where it was not clear what were the relevant documents, if any, on a particular point, counsel was given time (including overnight) to locate them with the help of the claimant who assisted his counsel throughout the hearing on many occasions.

The hearing before me lasted 21/2 days. Given the volume of the material to which I was referred and given the importance of much of it against the background of the allegations being made by the claimant, I feel I must set out much of the relevant material in full.

In late 1999/early 2000 the claimant was awarded a grant by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (“EPSRC”) to undertake an M Phil at the university, with a view to progressing to a PHD. An MPhil is expected to take between 18–24 months. By the end of August 2000 a 10 month report had been approved (see E12 and ff.).

After about 18-24 months a student will normally present a Transfer Report which is assessed by internal and external assessors. If it is approved the student may start his PHD research. The claimant had not presented a transfer report before his studentship was terminated. He wrote that he had been unable to make any progress since early May 2001 (C68, 19/06/2001, Claimant’s bundle 368 where the lack of progress is said to be due “primarily” to the lack of supervision). As he wrote to Dr Farwell on 7 August, pursuing two grievances had become increasingly time consuming (C30). According to a memorandum sent to Dr Farwell, the claimant had said to two of his supervisors on more than one occasion that “writing an MPhil transfer report is merely a bureaucratic exercise which does not interest me ...”. (D10).

I shall start by summarising the history of the disciplinary proceedings which led to the termination of the claimant’s studentship and his exclusion from the University.

On 27 July 2001 Professor Bridge wrote a memorandum to the complainant setting out aspects of the claimant’s conduct both as a part time lecturer and a research student which, so he wrote, gave him serious concern (C2). We are not principally concerned in this case with his conduct as a lecturer. His contract expired and he was not offered a renewal. In so far as his conduct as a research student was concerned Professor Bridge made a series of allegations. At the conclusion of the letter he wrote that he was recommending to Dr Farwell, that the Student Disciplinary procedures should be invoked under the following headings:

“Section 1.1 Conduct which prevents, obstructs, or disrupts the administration of the university.

Section 1.13 Any act that is likely to be detrimental to the university’s relationship with the community and/or any professional bodies.

Section 1.10 Any action likely to cause injury to a person or impair the safety of the premises.

Section 1.9 A breach of any Regulations of the Student Union or the university or any of the Halls of Residences”.

According to the claimant he had had little “interaction” with Professor Bridge prior to a meeting on July 23 2001, to which I shall return (C29, para. 5).

On 27 July Professor Bridge forwarded a letter to Dr Farwell enclosing papers about the claimant which in the view of Professor Bridge “contains grounds for student disciplinary action, beyond the informal stage” (C1). In his view “the internal processes that I have followed are well and truly exhausted.”. The enclosed papers included his memorandum to the claimant of the same date, “letters from many staff some of which follow the result of my enquiries” and email correspondence described as “a small representative sample of all Mr Bangert’s email correspondence with staff”. It was not possible during the hearing to work out precisely what the sample contained.

On 27 July 2001 the claimant, after receiving Professor Bridge’s memorandum, sent an email to Dr Farwell in which, amongst other things, serious allegations were made against Professor Bridge (C12-13). Accompanying it was a series of emails (C14-27).

 Dr Farwell wrote to the claimant on 1 August telling him that she was now instigating the Full Student Discipline Procedure in accordance with section C of that procedure. She invited the claimant’s responses to the Professor Bridge memorandum and indicated that thereafter she would interview him.

The claimant replied by email on 7 August 2001 (C28-29) asking for, amongst other things, more particulars of the allegations which he faced. Dr Farwell responded giving more detail. She referred him in particular to:

“paragraphs 5, 7 and 9 [of the Bridge memorandum], which are potentially breaches under 1.1 (i) of the Student Discipline Procedure

paragraph 2, which is potentially a breach under 1.1(iii) of the Student Discipline Procedure

paragraphs 6, 8, 19, which are potentially breaches under 1.9 of the Student Discipline Procedure

paragraphs 14 and 15, which are potentially breaches under 1.13 of the Student Discipline Procedure ”

The claimant replied by email (C31-32). The following extracts give an example of the attention paid by the claimant to matters of procedure (for another example see the last two sentences of paragraph 5 at C29).

“... However, I still have trouble with a few things:

1.

You state “the alleged offences are set out in Professor Bridge’s memo … I refer you in particular to incidents described in … paragraphs 5, 7 and 9 …”

The term “I refer you to” is subject to interpretation and does not make clear what you consider an alleged offence and what you do not. It does not necessarily limit the scope to the paragraphs you mention, it does not make clear that the paragraphs you mention are allegations “serious in nature”, and it leaves the onus of determining the details of the alleged offence up to me to determine (see point 2).

2.

Most of the items you refer to consist of a large number of allegations. I have counted a total of 44 potential allegations in the 9 paragraphs you stated contained valid allegations. If a paragraph consists of a number of allegations I would need to know which allegation you consider valid and which you do not.

...

1.

...

2.

...

3.. With respect to paragraphs that contain more than 1 alleged offence, only a single alleged offence will be considered a valid alleged offence.

4.

With respect to paragraphs that contain more than 1 alleged offence, my choice of alleged offence will be considered the definitive alleged offence.”

Attached to the email was what the claimant described as his “preliminary conditional response” to the allegations (C33-44). During the course of the hearing before me Mr Hyams argued that the defendant could not place reliance on it because, so it was said, it was superseded by a further response delivered on 10 October. I reject that argument. There was nothing to suggest that the claimant thought at the time or had been told that the “preliminary conditional response” would not be considered (see D25, right hand column).

The claimant also sent what he described as “academic and employee timelines” (C65-74, academic, and 50-57, employee, the latter being preceded by a sheet bearing the title “Chronology Grievance Thomas Bangert v. David Protheroe”).

On 28 September 2001, before that first interview, Dr Farwell wrote a letter to the claimant making further allegations in respect of the claimant’s alleged use of the South Bank University’s website to publish material expressing his own opinion on a matter outside the business of South Bank University (Claimant’s bundle, 299). The material, of which complaint was being made by Dr Farwell, gave the claimant’s personal views about those involved in the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. The letter of the 28 September described the publication as “a breach of the University’s Code of Practice for Web Authors and also the legal requirements for Web Authors”. The claimant was told that these allegations would also be discussed at the interview.

 The first interview ultimately took place on Friday 5 October 2001. The claimant was subsequently given more time to meet the website allegation and those allegations were considered at a second interview on 12 October 2001.

On 10 October the claimant sent his “Response to Alleged breaches of Student Disciplinary Procedure” (C58-64) in accordance with an invitation from Dr Farwell at the first meeting (see D25, right hand column).

Notes of the two interviews were prepared by Karen Stephenson (see Claimant’s bundle 314-318 for the 5 October meeting and 321-323 for the 12 October meeting). The claimant covertly recorded the first interview and produced a transcript for the judicial review application (D14-27). The accuracy of that transcript was not in dispute.

On 1 November 2001 Dr Farwell wrote a letter to the claimant containing the report of her investigation into the two sets of allegations, namely those that were contained in the Professor Bridge letter of 27 July 2001 and those which related to the use of the University’s website (Claimant’s bundle, 324-328). Dr Farwell concluded that some of the allegations in the 27 July letter were not proved, that some were proved but did not justify any further action and that others should not be pursued, at least not for the time being. She found proved three allegations said to constitute conduct which prevented, obstructed or disrupted teaching, learning or research (C 326-328). The alleged facts said to constitute this conduct were set out in paragraph 2 (a), (b) and (c) (page 325):

“(a)

TB’s misuse for his research purposes of a network primarily set up for teaching and thus extending his research project in a way which was not agreed by his supervisors.

(b)

The hours kept by TB preventing him interacting properly with his supervisors (he works irregular hours).

(c)

Refusal by TB to sign papers relating to a change of supervisory arrangements for his PHD.”

For the sake of convenience I shall refer to these allegations as allegations 1, 2 and 3.

She also found the three allegations relating to the website proved. I shall call these the website allegations.

Paragraphs 4-5, 7, 9-13 of Professor Bridge’s July 27 memorandum relate to these allegations:

“4.

At our second meeting it emerged that you had not been presenting to your supervisor batches of material that will comprise your MPhil-PhD transfer report. You stated that you need a large network to verify your protocols, but you have persistently failed to specify precisely your requirements to your supervisors. The project as originally specified by Dr Peng involved simulations only. While this now extended to include some experimental verification it was never envisaged that more than a few computers would be necessary and Dr Peng’s own advice is you [do] not want to compromise on anything. I have to say here that any research project must operate within a realistic level of resource and you appear to want to exceed those bounds.

5.

Nevertheless you have been attempting to use a large teaching network set up for teaching purposes, thus extending your project in a way that is not agreed with your supervisors. Apparently you have on occasions interfered with the teaching network by reformatting and installing your own operating system, destroying data and the operating systems previously set up for teaching purposes, without getting prior permission from the staff members in charge.

6.

...

7.

Your attendance pattern at the University is most unsatisfactory especially in view of the poor progress of your research. You appear never to arrive until the afternoon. On several occasions when I have visited your laboratories to try to contact you, the other occupants said that you usually come in between about 3.00-4.00 pm. These hours severely limit the time available for interaction with your research supervisors.

8.

...

9.

Since Dr. Peng left, as stated earlier, you have been supervised by Dr Pervez and Professor Alford to the extent that has been possible under the conditions engendered by you as described above, however the change have not yet been submitted to the Research Degrees Committee. At our recent meeting it was agreed that Dr. Perry Xiao would be added to the team as second supervisor. Apparently you have now refused to sign formal papers on change in supervision arrangements to be submitted to the Research Degree Committee.

10.

In justification of the refusal you imply that these staff are unwilling to supervise you even though they have signed the forms. It is true that they all find you very difficult to reason with as described earlier. However, the School has a professional obligation to provide the supervision, and your supervisors recognize that. They have in my opinion been patient with you well beyond the call of duty. On order for any future progress to be made there needs to be a radical change of attitude on your part including a willingness to accept advice from those having more experience than you.

11.

You also imply that the staff nominated to supervise you may not meet EPSRC and University regulations regarding PhD supervision. All three have a PhD i.e. a training in research methods. Your research is being carried out in the Telecommunications Research Group and Dr Pervez, your proposed Director of Studies is the Head of the Telecommunications Division, DR Xiao is also in this division and both have extensive experience of networks. Professor Alford has supervised numerous successful PhD’s. No matter how specialised and unique you believe you work to be, this team is more than competent to offer guidance on whether your work is logically structured and follows the scientific method, and whether you are managing your time properly. They are also able to judge whether you have carried out a fully referenced literature search to establish the originality of your ideas. The word of any researcher will be beyond the knowledge of their supervisor to some extent, otherwise it would not be a new piece of work. If, however this ever becomes a problem additional advice can be sought from sources outside the School. However this does not excuse your refusal to accept the most appropriate supervisory team that the School is able to offer.

12.

The advice from external sources to date is not very promising. The referee for your 10 monthly report implies that the literature search and the placement of your work in context was clearly unsatisfactory in merely being a list of some 15 references. You did not explore all the alternative research approaches to yours in dealing with the problem of latency, which is the heart of your project.

13.

A second source of advice is even less promising. Professor Ian Marshall, Head of Internet Engineering at British Telecom is registered as an external collaborator. He surely is able to judge your work, no matter how specialised it may be. Therefore he did add substantially to the strength of the supervisory team. However he is no longer prepared to work with you until a number of issues have been resolved. He acknowledges that you are highly creative but that you have not learnt to adhere to the objective standards expected of a scientist. He finds your grasp of the scientific method and mores to be very weak.”

In paragraph 5.4 Dr Farwell stated her belief that the allegations 1-3, as I have called them, “can be substantiated” and “that TB’s conduct would be sufficient to recommend to EPSRC that his studentship be suspended.” It seems clear to me that Dr Farwell did find these three allegations proved- notwithstanding some ambiguity in this and later passages.

To understand the first three allegations it is necessary to look at the application made by the claimant to register for a research degree (C94), what happened when the claimant’s director of studies resigned from the University, thus ceasing to be a supervisor, and the views of those who supervised him as recorded in documents available to Dr Farwell.

Under the title “Supervision of Programme of Work” in the application (C98) Dr Peng is named as the Director of Studies, Dr Pervez as the Second Supervisor and Professor Alford as the Third Supervisor (C378). Under the heading of Collaborating Partner (C94) are named British Telecomms and Ian Marshall who was working with the BT laboratories.

Dr Peng ceased to be the supervisor when he left the University in January 2001. Professor Alford wrote on 25 July that he was “involved in re-registering Thomas with EPSRC after Dr Peng’s departure” in a period before May 2001 (D4). Dr Pervez wrote on 26 July that he “immediately assumed the responsibility of supervising” the claimant on the departure of Dr Peng “at least until a new supervisor could be allocated” (C8). According to Dr Pervez he made little progress with the claimant and, in May, Professor Alford offered to take responsibility for the claimant’s supervision (C8). Thereafter the two tried unsuccessfully, so Dr Pervez wrote, to help the claimant to progress his work (C8).

By June, if not before, the relationship between the claimant and Professor Alford and Dr Pervez was strained. I should add, for completeness, that during the course of argument I was told that the only person within the relevant group with whom the claimant did not fall out was Professor Alford.

On 19 June the claimant was telling Professor Alford and Dr Pervez that he was unable to do any further work on his PhD due to obstruction by the lab technician Mr Alan Nigrin. The claimant wrote that due to problems between him and Mr Nigrin relating to the equipment: “I have been unable to make any progress since early May” (C68).

On 22 June the claimant sent an email to Professor Alford and Dr Pervez, the summary of which in the claimant’s words is as follows (C68):

“I state that the meetings have so far not been helpful and it seems it is leading to a dispute. I ask for the code of practice regarding PhD students supervision to be looked at to help find a way forward.”

According to the claimant the request was ignored (C68). Although it is not clear whether the email sent to Professor Alford and Dr Pervez was before Dr Farwell, it is in the claimant’s bundle (600). Headed “EPSRC grievance procedures”, it reads:

“On reviewing the minutes of the meeting of the 19.06.01 I feel that there are irreconcilable differences between myself, my supervisor and the director of my group. I conclude this for the following reasons:

decisions were made unilaterally

decisions were made without regard to actual available resources or issues regarding practical implementation

items were brought up, discussed and decided upon without being on the agenda of the meeting

items which were on the agenda of the meeting were not addressed and not decided upon

items which were decided on are not implemented or enforced

An irreconcilable difference is the basis of one type of grievance. Given that a grievance exists, or is likely to exist in the near future, I feel that it is necessary to invoke the effective procedures to resolve problems of this kind; access to which the university is expected to maintain.

I am an EPSRC funded student and consequently EPSRC terms and conditions apply. The EPSRC Student Handbook specifies that the departmental faculty should have a code of practise. Grievance procedures should be set out in the is code of practice. I called Chris Clare (Dean of Faculty) enquiring as to where this code of practice could be found. He informed me that each school is responsible for maintaining its own code of practice and in my case I should take this up with Bryan Bridge. Bryan Bridge informed me that he was unaware of any code of practice other than the staff handbook, but if the issue was EPSRC related it would be the responsibility of Neil Alford. Pamela Keep searched through the staff handbook but was unable to find a code of practice within it. I went to see Prof. Alford and he told me that the School of EEIE did not in fact have a code of practice.

As the EPSRC handbook clearly states that the university is responsible for ensuring that students and supervisors have access to effective procedures for resolving these kinds of issues, I would suggest that the EPSRC and/or another university be contacted in order to assist in the development of a code of practice. I feel that at present a code of practice would be instrumental in resolving the issues that are obstructing my PhD work, and I am sure we can all agree that in general the school should have a code of practice in place.”

I turn to an email dated 20 July 2001, which may or may not have been seen by Dr Farwell and I believe was not included within the academic or employee “timeline” (albeit there is an oblique reference to it at C70). The claimant wrote to Dr Pervez that Professor Alford was not his supervisor but “my supervisor is Anjim Pervez” and he had taken over the supervision of the PhD (Claimant’s bundle 194). When I asked Mr Hyams why the claimant had written this email in view of his stated position that he had no supervisor (see below), Mr Hyams said, on instructions, that the claimant had been told that Dr Pervez would take over from Dr Peng.

On July 26 the claimant sent a memorandum to Dr Pervez concerning the transfer of supervisor for his PhD research (C100). It was copied to Professor Alford.

“Earlier today you presented me with a transfer document (signed by yourself, Perry Xiao, Neil Alford) and asked me to sign & date it. I explained to you that I feel that at this time I am unable to sign this document at this time for the following reasons:

1.

Due to a number of recent incidences where I have been asked to accept things which have later been found to be inappropriate I have been advised that any document that I am asked to sign should be rigorously examined by an appropriate independent 3^rd party.

2.

This transfer was discussed on the meeting of the 23.07.01 (myself, you, Bryan Bridge and Neil Alford). The concern that was raised (and which was not resolved) was whether the individuals put forward for supervision met University regulations as well as EPSRC requirements regarding PhD supervision.

3.

All of the individuals nominated for supervision must be willing to supervise and should make the commitment to provide the support mandated by PhD research supervision. On the meeting of the 23.07.01, the concern was raised that some of the individuals put forward would not be willing to supervise or would be unable to give a commitment regarding the level of support.

Item number 1 may be resolved reasonably quickly, but I would need the original document for a period of 3 or 4 days. Item number 2 would need to be resolved by consulting SBU regulations on post-grad student supervision and consulting with the EPSRC. Item number 3 would need to be resolved through a meeting with the individuals put forward.”

On 30 July the claimant sent an email (C107-C108) to Dr Pervez with copies to Professor Alford, Dr Xiao and Professor Bridge. He stated that he would be happy to come to a meeting on Wednesday 1 August. He did not think it would be beneficial or productive to attend a “formal” meeting. He referred to what he said was a dispute between himself and Dr Pervez on a number of issues. He wrote that he hoped that Dr Pervez would agree: “that it would be most unhelpful to either side if you were at present to take on this supervision with these outstanding disputes”. He mentioned that Dr Pervez had said that he was not willing to take up the supervision and continued:

“I feel that it would be unfair and unproductive of either myself and Bryan Bridge to coerce you into doing something which you do not feel willing or able to do. The situation at present is that although it is possible that you will take up the supervision, it has not been agreed or formalised, and in my view it would be unlikely due to university regulations.”

The claimant stated that he had been told (“informally and in confidence”) that Dr Pervez had been asked by Professor Bridge to look at ways of terminating his EPSRC’s funding and that this was “a task I have been told you had accepted”. He went on:

“As you have been my acting supervisor (formal or informal) since [Dr Peng] left I feel that if true that this would constitute a serious breach of trust with me and a serious breach of your duties and responsibilities with the University.”

The claimant then referred to the timing of a request from Dr Pervez to the claimant for material to assess the claimant. He went on to say that it is not the role of a supervisor to assess:

“I will certainly not be willing to discuss or to have discussed ‘assessment’, as assessment is not the role of a supervisor.”

Following further complaints the claimant set out his suggested agenda and a number of conditions for the meeting.

This email was in reply to a short email from Dr Pervez asking the claimant to attend “a meeting to assess your MPhil transfer progress”. The claimant was asked to bring along his preparation material for that transfer, a list of equipment he may require to complete his measurements and a plan for the frequency of usage of the proposed equipment (C109).

I turn to 3 meetings held in August to discuss the progress of the claimant’s research. Dr Farwell had copies of the minutes as agreed by those present other than the claimant. The claimant covertly recorded the meetings and has produced transcripts. His case is that the minutes are “false”. He was given copies of the minutes at the October 5 interview. The minutes of the third meeting suggest that he had earlier been given or shown the minutes of the second meeting. Ground 3 relates to these three sets of minutes and I shall return to that later.

Prior to the 8 August meeting the claimant sent an email to Dr Pervez, copied to Professor Alford (C110), in reply to short email from Dr Pervez (C110):

“There were a number of procedural items which were not resolved at the previous meeting. I did explain that this would need to be decided before the meeting actually began, and I thought that there was general agreement on this. In the interest of expediency I hope we can all agree on the following so that we can move onto the actual items of the agenda.

 Minutes:

We have agreed that minutes will be taken. We were not able, however, to agree on what would constitute ‘minutes’. As we spent a considerable amount of time discussing what would constitute ‘minutes’ I would like to resolve this in advance.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary:

Minutes: “the official record of the proceedings of a meeting”

Proceedings: an official record of things said or done

I regularly attend meetings that are minuted and this is the standard definition that is generally accepted. I would agree that not every word or phrase needs to be recorded, but if there is no agreement as to what is minuted and what is not then I would ask that we work according to the standard definition.

Proposal:

- statements of relevance should be minuted (universal agreement on relevance & personal textual agreement)

- personal statements should be minuted if requested by another member

- actions should be minuted if requested by another member

 Chair:

It was agreed that we should have a chair, but we were unable to agree on who the chair would be. A chair would need to be objective and impartial. As Anjum and myself are working out a number of disputes that have arisen over the past 2 years I feel that Anjum is not impartial to the proceedings and therefore it would not be correct for him to chair the meetings. Neil has in the past acted as chair on an informal basis and if the need is felt that we do need to assign a chair formally then I would agree with Neil acting as chair. However, I did not propose that we do need to assign a chair formally and I would be happy to agree with Neil continuing to chair on an informal basis.

 We need to agree that:

1.

Later reference to a meeting should be limited to the approved minutes.

2.

Privacy protocol needs to be agreed. Minutes are either completely private or completely public, and if not we need a protocol on what is private and what is public.”

The first meeting was held on 8 August. Those present were Professor Alford, Dr Xiao, Dr Pervez and the claimant. The minutes signed by Dr Pervez, Professor Alford and Dr Xiao read (C101):

“A research progress meeting was called by the research supervisory team on 1 August 2001 at 10:00am.

Dr Pervez opened the meeting by stating that the purpose of the meeting was to ensure Mr Bangert’s transfer form MPhil to PhD, and as Mr Bangert ahs been studying for almost two years now, the transfer should not be delayed any further.

Dr Pervez asked Mr Bangert to present his written material for discussion (Mr Bangert was asked to bring such material in the invitation memo (attached).

Mr Bangert refused to take part in any such discussions on the following grounds.

1.

The invitation memo does not have the word ‘Agenda’, and therefore he does not accept the three items in the memo to be the agenda of this meeting.

2.

The words ‘assessment of his progress’ are unacceptable to him. The job of supervisors, in his opinion, is not to assess but to advise.

3.

He was not asked in advance to include his own agenda items.

4.

He emailed Dr Pervez his list of issues (also attached) for discussion which have not been included as agenda items.

5.

He then declared that Dr Pervez as the Chair of the meeting was unacceptable to him on the grounds that Mr Bangert did not accept the supervisory team by not signing the ‘supervisor transfer’ form and, as a result, Dr Pervez was not his Director of Studies.

6.

He then said that Prof. Alford being the most senior person present would be acceptable to him as the Chair.

Despite the fact that this was an inappropriate behaviour of Mr Bangert, and there was every justification to terminate the meeting, Dr Pervez requested Prof Alford to take the Chair in the hope that some progress might be made.

While Prof. Alford Chairing [sic] the meeting, Mr Bangert was repeatedly asked by Prof. Alford, Dr Pervez and Dr Xiao to direct his attention to MPhil transfer process Mr Bangert was unwilling to do this as the items he wished to discuss were not on the agenda.

Consequently the meeting was closed at 11:00am with the outcomes:

1.

The next meeting is to be held on 8 August at 11:00am.

2.

The word ‘agenda’ will appear on the memo.

3.

The word ‘assess’ will not be used in the memo.

4.

The three items proposed for this meeting will be discussed first in the next meeting.

5.

His list of issues will be put as agenda items to be discussed but only after the three items proposed by the supervisory team have been thoroughly discussed.”

The next meeting was held on 15/08/2001. It was attended by Professor Alford (chair), Dr Xiao, Dr Pervez and the claimant. The minutes signed by all those present other than the claimant read (C103):

“A research progress meeting was called by the research supervisory team on 8 August 2001 at 11:00am. The meeting was Chaired by Prof. Alford as the proposed supervisory team has not been accepted by Mr Bangert. He, however, agreed for Prof. Alford to Chair the meeting.

The supervisory team waited for around 15 minutes for Mr Bangert to arrive. On arrival, he immediately objected to Dr Xiao’s presence. Mr Bangert had sent an email to Dr Xiao (copied to Prof Alford and Dr Pervez) on the previous evening stating that he does not wish Dr Xiao to be involved in the supervisory team. Prof Alford insisted that he as the Chair wishes Dr Xiao to stay. Mr Bangert’s reply was that if Dr Xiao stayed then Mr Bangert would not take part in the meeting and would consider the meeting terminated. At this point, Prof. Alford, most reluctantly, asked Dr Xiao to leave, primarily to prevent the termination of the meeting. However, Prof. Alford did warn Mr Bangert that this behaviour of his would have a negative effect on his future progress. Dr Xiao left the meeting at around 11:35.

Mr Bangert then started his discussion by explaining to the Chair, how the minutes are taken in a meeting. Prof Alford eventually stopped him by saying that he knows very well how the minutes are taken. After arguing for a further few minutes, it was finally agreed that the Chair would have the right to record whatever was necessary. The next item of contention was the length of MPhil transfer report. Prof. Alford advised Mr Bangert that he should write the transfer report with PhD in mind so that the underlying original work is clearly identified. Furthermore, he should not worry too much about the length of the report. Mr Bangert did not seem very happy with this advice and insisted that Prof. Alford should give him a guarantee that the length of the report would not result in any penalty. Prof. Alford then said that he was trying to give Mr Bangert a friendly advice. At this point Mr Bangert stated that he did not want friendly advice from Prof. Alford, he wanted his assurance that exceeding the length would not incur a penalty.

The meeting ended with the following outcomes:

1.

Mr Bangert does not want Dr Xiao to be involved in the supervisory team.

2.

The content pages for the MPhil transfer report were received by the Chair.

3.

Other information received includes:

i)

10 month report

ii)

A report on source routing for WAN

iii)

Some material on Switched IP protocol

iv)

Some general information is available on the Web site used for a presentation.

4.

Prof. Alford advised Mr Bangert that should that should the length of the transfer report exceed the recommended 6000 words, no penalty would result.

5.

Prof Alford agreed to review the ‘Introduction’ given on pages 1-6 of the 10 month report, and make comments.

6.

The next meeting will be held on 16 August 2001, at 10:00am in Prof. Alford’s office.”

The 16 August minutes record the following as present: Professor Alford, Dr Pervez and the claimant. The minutes were signed on 31 August by Professor Alford and Dr Pervez. They read (C105):

“The third research progress meeting was called by the research supervisory team on 16 August 2001 at 10:00am. The meeting was Chaired by Prof. Alford.

Mr Bangert arrived at 10:08. He wished the team to review minutes of the previous meeting as he disagreed with the wording of the minutes. For example:

‘Mr Bangert does not want Dr Xiao to be involved in the supervisory team’ (the original text of the minutes).

Mr Bangert wanted it to be changed to ‘Mr Bangert felt that Dr Xiao’s presence was inappropriate’.

(Please see the attached two versions of the minutes).

It took around half an hour to reword the minutes.

The next item that he wished to be discussed was to review the feedback from Prof. Alford on page 1-6 of his 10 month report. He read Prof. Alford’s comments (sent to him previously) and said that he was thankful to the Prof for reading the pages, however, he found the comments made to be very ‘pedestrian’. The supervisory team felt that remark was unhelpful and displayed an ignorance of what was required in the introduction to a PhD thesis. Prof I Marshall, BT Internet research has also commented on similarly unhelpful remarks.

Mr Bangert then asked Dr Pervez to review the same 1-6 pages of his 10 month report and yet in the first meeting Mr Bangert refused to accept Dr Pervez as the Chair (and hence the Director of study) on the grounds that Mr Bangert did not sign the supervisor transfer form and therefore Dr Pervez could not be his Director of study and also, according to Mr Bangert, there was a dispute between him and Dr Pervez (this is an agenda item provided by Mr Bangert that he wishes to be discussed in research progress meetings).

Dr Pervez pointed out that this was not the time to review the 10 month report which was completed over a year ago. The supervisory team would like to see his progress since the 10 month report as the purpose of these meetings is to advise Mr Bangert on MPhil transfer. In his opinion, Dr Pervez said, after a period of almost two years a MPhil/PhD student is expected to present a comprehensive report giving he essence of his/her PhD work. Mr Bangert did not respond to this observation.

The meeting ended at 11.04 with the following outcomes.

1.

Mr Bangert is going on holidays the date for the next meeting will be agreed on his return.”

In a memorandum dated 1 October from Professor Alford to Dr Farwell (D7-8), Dr Alford sets out his comments on a meeting which had taken place between the claimant, Dr Pervez and himself on 26 September 2001. The claimant described comments on his 10 month report as “pedestrian”. In the case of the comments made by Dr Pervez the claimant “completely dismissed the comments in a manner which I felt was both rude and abusive.” The memorandum continues:

“The meeting confirmed my view that Mr Bangert does not seem able to focus on bringing the PhD to completion. He will not reason with his supervisors at all and his approach is always highly confrontational. He has refused to sign the SBU change of supervisor form (after Dr Peng’s departure) as he feels that the supervisory team is not capable of supervising his work. This is not the case. There appears to be no progress beyond the 10-month report.

Finally, when I was asked to become a member of the supervisory team I accepted, fully believing that my experience as a PhD supervisor and as a PhD examiner would be of help. I am now convinced that Mr Bangert is not capable of receiving criticism about his work and is unwilling to take steps to make progress. I can see no evidence of work on the PhD since his 10 month report, despite the fact that the supervisory team has requested evidence that progress towards the transfer course report be presented.”

On 27 September the claimant sent an email to Professor Bridge about his supervision with a copy to, amongst others, Dr Farwell (Claimant’s bundle, 368).

“On the 23.07.01 you proposed that Anjum Pervez take on the supervision of my PhD research, assisted by Neil Alford and Perry Xiao. I raised the concern that this supervisory team did not meet University and EPSRC regulation regarding PhD supervision. As the basis of my concern I stated that I was aware that most universities have the following requirements.

A principal supervisor must:

1.

[have] expertise in the area of the proposed research

2.

normally have had previous experience of supervising research students.

A Subsidiary Supervisor must:

1.

have expertise relevant to the area of proposed research

2.

be familiar with the standards required for MPhil/PhD research

I also pointed out that:

Honorary members of staff shall not normally be appointed as either Principal or Subsidiary Supervisors.

Unfortunately you did not address the concern at the time.

I also informed you that I had been called to this meeting as a member of staff to discuss a grievance and that it was not appropriate to discuss student issues. It seem clear to me that you had taken on the job of ‘sorting out’ the problem of supervision of my PhD research and I suggested that we have a separate meeting on this issue. As the meeting was not minuted, I wrote a letter to you after this meeting to ensure that there would be no misunderstanding.

It was therefore with some surprise that on the 26.07.01 that Anjum Pervez approached me (on your behalf) to sign a document which stated that ‘I accept to be supervised by Anjum Pervez, Neil Alford and Perry Xiao’. I informed Anjum Pervez that his request was improper as the matter had not yet been decided. I wrote to you on the 26.07.01, re-iterating the concerns I had raised on the 23.07.01. More than 2 months have now passed and I have not had a reply. There have not been any meetings on the issue and none are scheduled: and the matter still remains unresolved.

I must point out that my previous supervisor left in January 2001. The issue of finding a supervisor to replace my previous supervisor was not taken up until June 2001. I have suggested on a number of occasions (both as a member of staff and as a PhD research student) that due to the nature of my research work that it would probably be necessary to appoint an external supervisor (as I was the only member of staff available to the School at the time with expertise in the area).

Given that the issue is a matter of urgency (partly due to the fact that I have not been able to make any progress in my research work since May 2001, primarily due to the lack of supervision) and given that you have not addressed the concerns I have raised (both in the meeting of the 23.07.01 and in writing) I request that the School appoint an external supervisor.”

The reply from Professor Bridge dated 11 October and copied to Dr Farwell, reads as follows (claimant’s bundle 370):

“Concerning your recent, memorandum of September on this matter I am writing to state that I am not prepared to enter into any more correspondence on the matter.

Your supervisory team fully meet the criteria of the Research Degrees Committee. As for your request for an External Supervisor to be appointed I would point out that there is already an external member of your supervisory team who has been approved by the Research Degrees Committee. He is Professor Ian Marshall, Head of Internet Research at BT research Laboratories, Martelsham.

You had regular meetings with him and he has complained to me (as you knew from previous correspondence) about your rudeness and lack of progress. I see no reason why I should expose any other external person to you unacceptable behaviour.”

In an email dated 12 October which was copied to Dr Farwell (claimant’s bundle 371), Mr Bangert complained about Professor Bridge’s memorandum of 11 October stating that he had not addressed any of the claimant’s concerns. The claimant continued:

“Prof. Bryan Bridge states that ‘Professor’ Ian Marshall ‘Head of Internet Research’ at BT labs is already a member of my supervisory team. Ian Marshall has not been proposed by Professor Bridge as an external supervisor: his name does not appear on the transfer of supervision document. Ian Marshall has never had any involvement in the supervision of my PhD research and neither has there been any proposal to include Ian Marshall in the supervision of my PhD research. I do have a very limited personal relationship with Ian Marshall: I have visited the BT labs once, he has visited me very briefly on one occasion here at the University and we have had personal correspondence via email. I would never discuss my research work with Ian Marshall (he made it quite clear to me that my area of research was not related to his work and that he did not have any interest in it) and my research work was not one of the topics of our personal email correspondence. I have had no meeting with Ian Marshall at all, there are no records of any such meetings, and I have had no contact with Ian Marshall of any kind for more than one year.”

According to the claimant: “Ian Marshall is not a ‘professor’ and he is not Head of Internet Research”.

“Ian Marshall’s highest qualification is an upper second BSc Honours Degree in Physics. He has neither an MSc nor a PhD degree. He is a Research Manager at BT labs, and he manages that research in ‘Active Networks’. Active Networks comes under the category of System Management, which has no relation to my area of research. His personal details are freely available on the Internet [address given].

Clearly Ian Marshall meets neither the University regulations nor EPSRC regulations re PhD supervision and therefore he would not meet the requirements of the research degree’s committee. I fail to understand why Prof. Bryan Bridge misrepresents Ian Marshall in this way. Particularly as Prof. Bryan Bridge himself states in his memorandum dated July 27 2001 that Ian Marshall is ‘not prepared to work for me’”.

The claimant takes the point, repeated during the course of the hearing, that Ian Marshall’s name did not appear in box 4.4 of the application to register for a research degree (C98). He was however listed, as I have already indicated, as the collaborating partner.

According to the claimant during his 5 October interview with Dr Farwell, the University had not addressed or had refused to address the issue of Dr Peng’s replacement until June. At that time, he said, the EPSRC wrote to the University asking why there was no supervisor. They then “got into a state of panic” and his grievance started. He said that he believed that that was not as a result of him contacting the EPSRC.

He also said that he had contacted EPSRC recently. Asked whether that was to complain about the absence of a supervisor he replied: “Well, not only that I ... well, that well in order to raise a number of issues.” (D20, right hand column)

Dr Farwell does not appear to have had a June letter from the EPSRC. She did have a letter from the EPSRC dated 14 August stating that it had recently come to their attention that Dr Peng had left South Bank and that no new permanent supervisor had been appointed. Although Dr Farwell probably did not have the background to this letter, it appears from 3 emails (27/07/, 3/08/ at 15.20 and 3/08/ at 15.51, claimant’s bundle 360-361) that the EPSRC had a record that Professor Alford had replaced Dr Peng and that the claimant had been told this. This has been confirmed since the hearing in a letter from the EPSRC dated 10 March 2003 which states that the 14 August letter was inaccurate in stating that no new permanent supervisor had been appointed and that the EPSRC had been made aware in May 2001 that Professor Alford had replaced Dr Peng as the claimant’s supervisor.

The August emails show that the claimant told the EPSRC that Professor Alford had not replaced Dr Peng. He wrote that Professor Alford had not been put forward as supervisor. It is not clear to me whether the EPSRC followed up that email. I have seen nothing to suggest, as the claimant said in his interview, that the EPSRC had written in June to the University asking why there was no supervisor. The defendant argued that the claimant’s account of these events showed his unreliability. It is difficult to see how the claimant thought that any reaction there may have been from the EPSRC in May/June was not as a result of him having contacted them and it is difficult to see why he was apparently reluctant to be more open about the August communication from him to the EPSRC. However this is a complicated story and I do not therefore accept the defendant’s argument on this point.

Dr Farwell herself asked the EPSRC for their comments on her draft report in so far as it related to this matter (E2-3).

I turn to the various views of the claimant as expressed by other persons and as presented to Dr Farwell. In a memorandum from Dr Pervez to Professor Bridge dated 26.07.2001 and forwarded by the latter to Dr Farwell, Dr Pervez wrote:

“I have known Mr Bangert for about one and a half years in my capacity as Telecoms Group Leader as well as his teaching mentor. I found him an intelligent and conscientious person, however he has two serious problems, a) he is completely unable to interact with other people, and b) does not take much notice in general, of advice given to him. This inability of his often results in a great deal of bitterness and misunderstanding between himself and others that he is interacting with.”

After referring to matters which arose out of the claimant’s teaching, Dr Pervez continued:

“His interaction with the technical staff in Telecommunications laboratories has been particularly very unpleasant. There is an ongoing quarrel between himself and the laboratory technicians. This is a problem that we are currently trying to resolve by limiting his access to all teaching laboratories.”

He describes a number of meetings about the claimant’s work and continues:

“In all these meetings Mr Bangert kept going in circles without giving any constructive or informative output. It has been very difficult for me as well as Prof. N. Alford to get any meaningful information from Mr Bangert over the past few months.”

Dr Pervez goes on to say that he had introduced the claimant and Dr Peng to Professor Marshall “who later became the visiting Prof to the Telecomms Group” “so that Mr Bangert should have access to advice and leading researchers in Networking and have a forum available for discussing his research.” Dr Pervez continues:

“Unfortunately after a number of meetings between Mr Thomas, Dr Peng and Prof. Marshall, it became clear to Prof Marshall that the discussion meeting with Mr Thomas was a complete waste of his time and he, with regret, withdrew from any more meetings with Mr Bangert.”

Dr Pervez completed his memorandum to Professor Bridge with this paragraph:

“In summary, my reading of Mr Bangert is that it would be almost impossible for anyone to have a good day to day working relationship working with him for any reasonable length of time. He imposes unrealistic and unreasonable demands on the division, which annoys other members of the division (academics and technicians) and results in a disruption of our normal working environment.” (C8)

It is fair to point out that the claimant himself had complained about the behaviour of Dr Pervez. The claimant’s bundle has a large number of material containing or referring to these complaints (see e.g. timelines and claimant’s bundle 201). On 27 September 2001 he raised a formal staff grievance against Dr Pervez (see claimant’s bundle 201). On 11 October the claimant made a formal student complaint against Dr Pervez alleging that he had covered up and passively and actively colluded with the bullying of the claimant by Alan Nigrin, that he had misled and given improper information to the claimant’s project student and that he had abused supervisor-student privilege (claimant’s bundle 200). The complaint was rejected by Professor Bridge (claimant’s bundle 215-217) and the claimant launched an appeal (claimant’s bundle 219-224).

On July 25 Professor Alford sent an email to Professor Bridge, which was forwarded to Dr Farwell. Professor Alford was Professor of Physical Electronics and Materials at the University. He described meeting the claimant in May 2001 when he thought that the claimant’s progress was “most encouraging”. “I must add that although I do not feel confident to judge the science of PhD it seemed from initial discussions, there was a good chance that completion was possible.” (C10)

He then refers to a series of problems which broadly concerned use of equipment which the claimant had acquired from the LRC, use of the Network in the teaching lab, purchase of equipment by the claimant from personal funds and problems with personal interaction with Alan Nigrin of the technical staff. He, for example, described a first series of meetings when he attempted to isolate and deal with the problems “but this became a tortuous exercise as the attached e-mails indicate.” (C10)

He said that his interaction had always been friendly with the claimant “but I have found Thomas to be extremely difficult to reason with.”

“He complains that management is at fault for not dictating to the technical staff that they should carry out his requests. His main concern seems to be with Alan Nigrin whom he believes has taken some of the equipment he obtained from the LRC. Alan maintains that he has returned the equipment and thus there is an impasse.”

Professor Alford then refers to further emails which he attaches to the memorandum about two possible routes. During the hearing it proved impossible to identify precisely which emails Professor Alford had forwarded to Professor Bridge and which, if any, of those emails were then forwarded by Professor Bridge to Dr Farwell (C115):

Dr Xiao wrote in the memorandum also dated 25 July to Professor Bridge and also forwarded to Dr Farwell:

“I have known PhD student Thomas Bangert for about two years, but I don’t have a lot of contact with him. Since last summer, he has been using the computer facilities in room T517, which are meant to be the teaching facilities, for his PhD study purpose. Because of his way of computer settings, the lab sessions (also run in T517 using the same computer facilities) for my two units, “Internet Technologies” and “Internet Protocols and Technologies”, have been severely affected. Therefore I would very much like to keep the computer facilities in room T517 for teaching purpose only, or at least teaching should have the first priority.”

Alan Nigrin’s view of the claimant is contained in a memorandum to Professor Bridge dated 25 July 2001 and copied to Dr Farwell (C115). He describes the claimant’s behaviour in the teaching laboratory T517 as “unacceptable and irresponsible” and “causing great problems and is inhibiting progress and further development of the area.” He asks that action be taken “ to stop his interference with the normal day to day running and operation of the laboratory.” The memorandum continues:

“He moves teaching equipment around in the lab and has recently gone overboard with one of the computers by re formatting and installing his own operating system, destroying data in the operating systems previously set up for teaching purposes without seeking prior permission from any staff. The laboratory area he uses is left in a mess and he constantly breaks Health and Safety regulations by eating and drinking near electrical computer equipment even though there are signs posted in the lab to indicate the prohibition of this.”

Complaint is then made of a failure to lock the area on leaving, a matter about which, Alan Nigrin said, he has “been reminded on several occasions by members of staff”. There is reference to items being lost or stolen and the memorandum continues:

“He has an ‘I do as I like’ carefree, contemptuous attitude towards the Schools, established practices and policies, University’s rules and regulations, especially observing the orderly way of the running of the laboratory.

He is causing lots of distress to technical staff with his harassing behaviour while interacting with them, treating them as subordinates and therefore brings acrimony to the area with his unreasonable and inappropriate demands. He has already caused the suspension from work for a few months of Bob Moore who works under me in the area.

Working along side with him has become intolerable and extremely difficult due to his unreasonable uncompromising attitude and therefore a solution must be found at least to restrict his access to the area.” (C115)

The memorandum refers to an email which he encloses. During the course of the hearing an email dated 4 July from Alan Nigrin to Professor Alford Appearing (C115A) was produced by the defendant and said to be one of the documents before Dr Farwell. In the email Alan Nigrin complains about the behaviour of the claimant. In a letter dated 10 March following the hearing before me, it was submitted by Mr Hyams that I should draw the inference that the email was not before Dr Farwell. If Professor Bridge had forwarded not only the report from Alan Nigrin but also the enclosed document (as seems likely), then it would have been, but we do not know whether he did. I shall assume it was not before her.

To be fair to the claimant, he had made a number of complaints against Alan Nigrin going back at least as far as early June, suggesting, for example, that he should be disciplined (C188-198). The claimant wrote in an email to Professor Alford on 7 July and copied to Alan Nigrin and Anjim Pervez:

“I must also point out that my research work has already been delayed by 2 months because Mr. Nigrin ignored repeated requests to return this equipment (my own equipment which I lent out for educational use). Now I must spend valuable time (which I should be spending on my research work) to prove that I have been a victim of a crude street corner con trick. I have made this clear on several occasions that only a small fraction of my equipment had been returned (as well as my own equipment being passed off as LRC equipment and a number of other simple tricks), yet no steps have been taken by my management. This is not a complex issue. It concerns equipment which indisputably belongs to me and which indisputably should be returned to me.

What has happened is clearly a disciplinary issue; and with disciplinary issues it is extremely important that management take immediate action. If disciplinary steps are not taken this then legitimises the behaviour; acting as tacit approval of the behaviour. University regulations in these matters are quite clear: management has the duty (once informed) to investigate the issue and to take disciplinary measures if wrongdoing is found. This has not happened in my case. As a consequence (and inline with the theory), the amount of wrongdoing has increased to such a degree as to make progress in my PhD research practically impossible.”

He formally complained against Alan Nigrin’s behaviour on 11 October, when he also complained about Dr Pervez. As in the case of the complaint against Dr Pervez, the claimant’s grievance was dismissed.

Included within the material provided to Dr Farwell was a memorandum dated 19 July 2001 from a lecturer called Kate Viscardi to Professor Bridge (D6). In the memorandum Kate Viscardi complains about the unprofessional conduct of the claimant.

Kate Viscardi refers to the fact that Alan Howson had forwarded to her an email message dated 4 July which he and others had received from the claimant. That email can be seen in the claimant’s bundle (page 65). It is addressed to Bryan Bridge and copied to Alan Howson, David Protheroe and a fourth person. In the email the claimant repeats information which he says that he has received from a student about a course taught by Kate Viscardi (although she was not named in the email). A student had complained to the claimant that the class had not had a single item of feedback from Kate Viscardi and that he had absolutely no idea as to what his grade would be. The claimant stated in the email that he found this “particularly frustrating with respect to criticism made … of my teaching methods.”

According to his academic timeline the claimant received an email from Kate Viscardi on July 19 complaining about his behaviour (academic timeline at C70, see also to a similar effect C55-56). In his timeline he states:

“There is strong evidence that Kate made this complaint as a retaliation against me on the basis of the grievance against Dave. Retaliation is strictly prohibited and is a serious disciplinary offence under the grievance procedures.”

The 19 July email will be found in the claimant’s bundle (71).

On 26 July Kate Viscardi sent an email to Professor Bridge copied to the claimant and others complaining in strong language about the behaviour of the claimant (Claimant’s bundle 79). In a second email on the same day (C80), she wrote to Professor Bridge copying the message to the claimant:

“The timing of events on the 19^th July seems to be significant to Mr Bangert. Just to clarify that I made my written complaint to you much earlier that day. In fact I had written it several days before, but decided to handed to you and the 19^th was the first day on which you were available to see me. …”

It is the claimant’s case that the email from Kate Viscardi to him dated 19 July was part of the retaliatory action taken against him for making a grievance against Dr Protheroe.

On the 31 July Professor Clare sent an email to the claimant about the grievance and disciplinary proceeding relating to Kate Viscardi (D42). Having advised him not to send any emails to her, advice with which, according to Professor Clare, he had not complied, Professor Clare instructed him not to communicate any further with her.

On 7 August by email to the human resources department the claimant repeated the allegation that Kate Viscardi’s complaint was “false and unsubstantiated with malicious intent for the purposes of retaliation” and sought to include his complaint against Kate Viscardi as part of the complaint against David Protheroe (claimant’s bundle 82-83). He asks for protection against retaliation.

Dr Farwell also had before her a copy of an email dated 19 July from Ian Marshall to Dr Pervez (E7-E8). The email reads:

“After first meeting Thomas we had a protracted exchange of e-mail, during which I was attempting to get him to explain and focus his ideas. His proposal at the time was to demonstrate some form of learning algorithm he claimed to have invented. His discourse was confused, rambling, contradictory, aggressive and at times very insulting. I tolerated this in order to get to the bottom of his claims.

Eventually I concluded that there were no new practical ideas – the ideas had either been implemented before (e.g. by Steve Grossberg), or involved attempting to do non-Turing computation on a von-neumann machine (an obvious impossibility once the work was phrased in these terms). Thomas must have realised this too as shortly afterwards he radically revised the topic of his Phd.

At this stage it was clear that Thomas’ grasp of scientific method and mores was very weak. In addition, training him to do anything that would be respected by other academic scientists would be extremely hard. In particular Thomas displayed an inability to accurately interpret written material or dialogue, and an overwhelming urge to make 2 + 2 = 5. I have never met anyone who can so reliably get hold of the wrong end of the stick. I have to say the intelluctual structures he builds on his misconceptions are often very creative, but having built them he does not want to be told his assumptions are erroneous, and he will consistently ignore contrary data in order to defend them. As a result one has to tell him things somewhat obliquely and hope for the best. His unique approach is likely a result of his unusual background, and could potentially be turned to advantage, but unfortunately this is likely to be a very time consuming and disruptive process. His inability to listen is clearly a major barrier.

Thomas wrote a paper for the PGnet conference describing his new approach – experts in the audience told him that his work was built on wrong thinking, he claimed he knew better, and the audience (included some top UK experts) formed unfavourable opinions of both Thomas and his supervision. (they are unlikely to accept further work by Thomas, or even read it).

At my next (and thus far, final) meeting with Thomas we discussed this work. I attempted to point out the points where his argument was flawed in some detail (more than could be achieved at the conference by my colleagues). The meeting however did not help – Thomas had one (unreviewed) article written by sales staff for an equipment vendor that apparently supported his view, and justified in his mind the rejection of advice from any other source. Quoting reviewed papers, standards and expert consensus apparently counted for nothing other than proving you knew less than Thomas, who had found the one true source.

My conclusion is that Thomas is a highly creative (but poorly socialised) individual, who has no chance whatsoever of learning and adhering to the objective standards expected of a scientist. He would be best advised to follow an alternative career path – perhaps creative arts would suit him well.”

During the course of the hearing it was submitted that the inclusion in the July 27 memorandum and other papers of matters relating to academic rather than disciplinary matters was evidence of malice on the part of Professor Bridge. I do not agree. In this case the disciplinary matters could not entirely be separated from the academic matters.

I turn to the last matter to be considered before looking at the proved allegations, namely the responses to further requests for information made by Dr Farwell. On 8 October 2001 Dr Farwell wrote to Professor Bridge (D8) asking for copies of any information regarding the following:

“1.

Communication with Mr Bangert of any sort, or any forms which he would have had sight of, setting out the details of his supervisory team including the external adviser, Professor Ian Marshall. I would appreciate having copies of anything which would make it clear to Mr Bangert who the team was both before and after the departure of Dr Peng.

2.

Communication with Mr Bangert over the extent of the Schools arrangement with him to develop “The Teaching Network” for the School. Exactly what was he asked to do, what was the remit of his responsibility? Was any agreement reached about whether he would be separately remunerated for this, or was some other arrangement reached?”

Professor Bridge was also asked “whether the resources made available to the claimant were adequate to support his research and was there any reason why he would have to have used his own equipment”.

In his reply dated 11 October (D9), Professor Bridge said that the supervisory team was of the highest quality. He referred to Ian Marshall as the “external member of the supervisory team.”

 Professor Bridge confirms what Dr Pervez says in an attached statement, namely that the claimant had not been remunerated for delivering a “Teaching Network” for the School. His remuneration for part-time teaching was a completely separate matter.

As to the claimant’s involvement in the setting up of a local area network for the Telecommunications Subject Group, Professor Bridge wrote that that was:

“a relevant piece of research student training, given that his PhD project is about network protocols.”

He continued:

“Dr Pervez then states that Mr Bangert took his involvement in the network to excess, well beyond the teaching requirements, so causing gross disruption.”

Describing the supervisory team as excellent Professor Bridge went on:

“But through his behaviour Mr Bangert has made no progress and while this behaviour continues he is incapable of satisfying the requirements of a PhD. This behaviour includes unacceptable rudeness to School Staff especially Dr Pervez and, gross time wasting. There is no more that the School can do for him.”

In the accompanying document (D11), Dr Pervez stated that in the claimant’s 10-month report the equipment available within the group was clearly specified:

“There is no suggestion that further equipment will be purchased or required for Mr Bangert’s project. It was therefore reasonable to assume that the project was submitted to the research committee for approval on the basis that the equipment specified in the 10-month report was adequate for Mr Bangert’s research. The existing laboratory computing resource has always been available and is still available to Mr Bangert. In fact the group has significantly modernised its computing facility over the past year or so. Mr Bangert has had access to equipment which is much more up to date compared with that specified in his 10-month report.”

Dr Pervez states that the claimant neither asked for permission nor was authorised to use his own equipment. He disclosed that he was doing so in their meeting of the 19 June and action was taken immediately. (There is then a reference to “please see item 7” a reference about which Mr Hamilton could not assist me).

 After referring to Mr Bangert’s demonstration of a great deal of enthusiasm when the group was planning for modernisation and extension of its computer based facilities, he wrote:

“I agree that [the claimant] would be allowed to use the facility for his research but only when there were no teaching activities in progress. I strongly emphasise that teaching activities would always have the first priority. This was the basis of our collaboration. Thus, his involvement was purely on the basis of learning, gaining experience, and improving his chance of success for the PhD.”

 Dr Pervez continued:

“… Mr Bangert extended Network Development well beyond out teaching requirements and tailored it to suit his research. We allowed this to happen only in the spirit of supporting his PhD. As a result, the teaching staff (Dr P Xiao and Y Bao) had to develop a parallel experimental facility for teaching. We even duplicated the hard drives (incurring an extra cost) to ensure that Mr Bangert’s Network is unaffected by the teaching experiments. I believe we have given Mr Bangert every possible support but he seems to have no intention to progress with his PhD work..”

Against this background, I turn to allegation 1. The relevant paragraphs in the July 27 memorandum from Professor Bridge are 4-5.

The claimant’s response to the allegation was as follows. In paragraph 5 he summarised the allegation in this way: “I have been using a large teaching network for my research, without the agreement of my supervisors” (emphasis added). He went on:

“I do not at present have a supervisor. I do have the agreement of the Director of the area to use the lab network (which I built as an employee) for my research work. [Documentation available]

Neither Prof. Bridge nor my previous supervisor has raised this issued before.” (C33 &C58)

No such documentation appears to have been made available by the claimant. The “director of the area” who the claimant said had given agreement was in fact Dr Pervez.

He then set out his further understanding of the allegation: “I have extended my project in a way which was not agreed with my supervisors” (emphasis added). His response was:

“My research project was agreed with my previous supervisor and has not been extended.

Secondly my research project is registered with the EPSRC and I have submitted a ten month report which was accepted.

Third neither Prof. Bridge nor my previous supervisor have raised this issue before.” (C33 & C58)

Although Mr Hyams told me during the hearing that there was no document that would have enabled Dr Farwell to make the link between the diector of the area and Dr Pervez, the transcript of the October 5 interview shows that the link was made. (See the passage which I have underlined in paragraph 101 )

I turn to the transcript of the claimant’s evidence in so far as it relates to this allegation (D18).

Having characterised the allegation as “mischievous, malicious nonsense” he is asked by Dr Farwell to explain why this allegation is made if it is as the claimant was saying “basically not true”. He replied that Professor Bridge had asked other members of staff to dig up dirt on him. The claimant is then asked whether there could there be some misunderstanding. The claimant replied that it could be “an editing issue”. He then went on to describe what he said are the basic facts of the matter:

“Last year I was asked by the Director of the area, Anjum Pervez to set up a teaching network so, I mean, there is a lot of documentary evidence for that.”

He was then asked whether that had anything to do with his research project. He went on:

“Yes of course! because the reason … as you might know the school is desperately short of network expertise … The only lecturer who had any expertise in networking resigned some time ago … and even he didn’t have any real expertise in, kinds of hands on expertise, so one thing that the School wanted quite desperately was a teaching network, a network for teaching use. So, and something I needed for research and something which I formally requested as part of my research network was, was a small internet …. So the Director of the area is the second supervisor, so I approached him and said: ‘I need this, I need a research network for my research. What can you do?’ So, when he were in good terms with each other, …he came up with the solution, and that is that I build a network, that I put in, I put in the work. He, he put in for the funding, with the Head of the school, made a proposal, I wrote that proposal myself, you can ask for that document. I … its like this I wrote the initial, all the technical parts of that and Anjum Pervez edited that and submitted it to the Head of school. That was proved. And then, you know, basically I did all the work for building this network…. I ordered all the components…..and I designed, you can look at the documentation yourself.” (Underlining added)

He continued:

“And I made a formal agreement with the Head of school that, if I did this work, that, number one I would be paid for this work for, teaching work… because for some reason the school couldn’t pay consulting….you know I did a lot of work for, this, four months’ work.”

He went on to say that the school could not pay for consulting work but that he had made an agreement with the Head of School (Professor Bridge) that he would receive teaching hours to recompense him for the work. He said that he had received a reasonably prestigious teaching work and went on to say:

“And the other thing is that I specifically asked and clarified that this teaching network could also be available for research use. Not just for me but for any researcher in the area. So, and the agreement was that when, when the network is not available, when the network is not used for teaching purposes, that is available for research use.”

He said that he had complied with this requirement and made other people comply with it.

In her notes Dr Farwell summarised this part of the hearing as follows: (claimant’s bundle 316)

“ Noted: TB believed he had used this network appropriately. It had a dual role, for teaching and as a research tool.

Noted: That the initial allegations infer that TB’s research interfered with the teaching.

Noted: TB claims that the network is his responsibility as Network Administrator. He was given the task of building a new network by Anjum Pervez, the Course Director, such a network to be used for training and research, with the express provision that teaching takes precedence, on occasion TB has had to request that people stop using it so that teaching could commence.

Noted: That TB claims that he had not in any way an adverse effect on the teaching network.”

It was this evidence which led Dr Farwell’s to make further enquiries of Professor Bridge (see paragraph [100] )

Dr Farwell said, in paragraph 5.4.1, that she was “ of the opinion that it is clear that TB has used the teaching network for the purposes of his research.” However she noted that it has to be conceded that the claimant was commissioned by the school to develop the network for teaching purposes and also for his research. She also noted that it is also true that the boundary between his use for teaching and research purposes does not appear to be clearly distinguished.

In paragraph 5.4.2 Dr Farwell stated that the claimant “does not appear to accept that he has misused the teaching network but does appear to accept that he did use it for research which did not have the agreement of his supervisors.” His explanation, she stated, was that he had no supervisor and therefore the university was at fault for failing to provide him with one.

In paragraph 5.4.3 and in 5.4.5 Dr Farwell sets out her conclusions as to the position regarding his supervision. In paragraph 5.4.6 she concluded:

“RF is of the opinion that it cannot be said that TB does not have a supervisor. Even if TB were entitled to refuse accept DR Xiao, there are two other members of his supervisory team whom he could have asked for permission to extend his research as indicated by his use of the teaching network.”

In paragraphs 5.4.4 and 5.4.7 she did not accept the assertion being made by the claimant that his research had nothing to do with Professor Marshall. Professor Marshall worked with BT and had been named on the application for registration for the claimant’s research degree as a “collaborating partner”.

Dr Farwell’s conclusion that the claimant “does appear to accept that he did use it for research which did not have the agreement of his supervisors” seems to me to form the basis of the finding that allegation 1 had been proved. She based that finding on his assertion that he had no supervisor. I asked Mr Hyams for the claimant’s explanation as to why he had not simply said in his response that he did have the approval of Dr Pervez, one of his supervisors. Mr Hyams told me that the claimant thought that the question related to his “primary supervisor”. This answer is inconsistent with the use of the plural “supervisors” (paragraph 95 above). The answer given by Mr Hyams fits in with paragraph 22 of the claimant’s affidavit where he stated:

“What I have meant by the term ‘supervision’, ‘supervisor’ and specifically by the phrase ‘I do not have a supervisor’ is ‘primary supervisor’. At SBU secondary and third supervisors generally do not have any involvement in the practical and guiding work of advising a PHD student in his research. Dr Farwell misrepresents my use of the word supervisor in her report by making the assumption that I was making the claim of having neither primary, secondary nor third supervision. My written statement could give the impression that I did not have any supervision at all, which while true in practice due to the fact that at SBU second and third supervisors were generally assigned on paper as a matter of course, neglected what I had technically agreed to in the application. The fact that Dr. Pervez and Prof. Alford were second and third supervisor and that they were currently attempting to resolve the issue of supervision was made clear during the interview and accepted by Dr Farwell, but was not recorded in the minutes and was later ignored by Dr Farwell. Dr Farwell also ignores the fact that Dr Pervez, Prof. Alford, and Dr Xiao had refused to supervise me.”

He did not take this precise point in his written grounds of appeal against the findings of Dr Farwell (claimant’s bundle 330-338).

What Dr Farwell appears to have missed is the statement of Dr Pervez (see paragraph 92) above that he agreed that the claimant would be allowed to use the facility for his research. Understandably she may also have missed the passage which I have also underlined in the transcript of the October 5 interview (see paragraph 101 above). Indeed Mr Hyams himself missed it. The claimant did not take this narrow point in his written grounds of appeal against the findings of Dr Farwell (claimant’s bundle 330-338).

I turn to allegation 2, that contained in sub-paragraph (b) relating to working irregular hours. Paragraph 7 is the relevant paragraph in the Professor bridge memorandum.

The claimant’s response was (paragraph 7 at C33 and at C58):

“- my attendance is unsatisfactory (I appear to come in to the office only in the afternoon)

no evidence of attendance, merely personal anecdotes

Prof. Bridge has never come to see me as a student, therefore even personal anecdotes would not be valid

No reference to attendance requirements for research students is given

I am here almost every day, including holidays & weekends. [refer to security log for holiday and weekend attendance]

Neither Prof. Bridge nor my previous supervisor has raised this issued before.

- my attendance limits research supervision

I do not at present have a supervisor. The University has failed to appoint a supervisor for my research work for almost a year.

Neither Prof. Bridge nor my previous supervisor has raised this issue before.

- There has been poor progress in my research

Untrue [documentary evidence available, statements from leading academics available on request]

Neither Prof. Bridge nor my previous supervisor has raised this issue before.”

I turn to the transcript (D 21-22):

“TB: No. I’m saying, my point is that if the research student say doesn’t show up or doesn’t do his work then it is up to the supervisor to query that and first tell the student informally that “you are not doing, you should be attending more, you should be doing more work” and if the student then doesn’t do that then it’s up to the supervisor to raise that formally. But in this case there was no supervisor to raise this formally. So, I’m querying why this is an issue.

RF: So what you are basically saying is that you have never been challenged on it before.

TB: I’ve never been challenged on it before and /

RF: maybe because there wasn’t anybody to challenge you.

TB: No, my previous supervisor never challenged this… I would like to cover attendance in more detail. Not just on supervision.

RF: I’m happy with what you have written down here.

TB: I would like to add something.

RF: Can I ask you to be brief.

TB: Yep. What I would like to add, again, is that this allegation is again so ridiculous and untrue … so untrue and ridiculous that its only basis can be malicious intent.

RF: Can I /

TB If you can let me finish my point. …. So …its true that I might have come in at 4 o’clock occasionally but it is also true that if I come in at 4 o’clock that I might stay till 12 o’clock at night. So, if you look at … the primarily point here is that if you look at my output … my output is so high, and so much higher than other PhD students, both on the academic and work side, that … and all this documentation is available, you know there is tons of work related material that I have put on the web site, in addition to all the academic work that I have done, papers that I have written /

RF: Can I just say … I don’t think there is any, certainly to my mind anyway, any concern or doubt about your output or work. The issue which I think we actually teased out is to do with your hours of attendance [that] limit your interaction with your supervisor. I think what you have told me is that “you don’t have a supervisor” in your eyes. So I mean as I say its not an issue about how many hours you put in, its when you are in, and whether that potentially might limit your scope to interact with your supervisors. So I think you have actually addressed that. …. Can I also say something about your general statement about … which gets back to yor general introduction that some of these things are so ridiculous that they could only be prompted by malice. … we may have that as a statement up front which is on the record and I am willing to accept that you think that some of these paragraphs ar more ridiculous than others in that context. If you could just say, you don’t have to rehearse the whole thing again, when we get to a paragraph you think is particularly ridiculous just flag it for us, ok.

TB: I think this one is particularly ridiculous.

RF: That is noted.

TB: But with respect to other members of staff I would just like to add that … most, I would say most of the other members of staff, particularly Anjum Pervez, keeps pretty much the same hours as I do. The technician that I work with, Alan Nigrin, and Anjum Pervez the director of the area and who presumably was my second supervisor previously both keep reasonably similar hours than what I have been reported to keep. And it is my view that these are reasonable hours for an academic. …And as a PhD student I am not required to keep 9 to 5 hours, and as an academic member of staff I’m not required to keep 9 to 5 hours as well. And I should add that I have never missed any of my classes or never missed any meetings. So my punctuality is unblemished.”

I turn to Dr Farwell’s conclusions stated in paragraph 5.4.8:

“It is a matter of opinion whether or not the hours that TB have worked have prevented him from interacting properly with his supervisors and thereby obstructed research. TB explanation includes once again that he has no supervisor. Presumably, the implications being that if he has supervisor, he has no one to interact with and therefore that it does not matter what hours he works. For the reasons set out above [paragraph 5.4.6] RF does not believe that this argument can be sustained.”

I now turn to allegation 3. The allegations are to be found in paragraphs 9-11 of the Professor Bridge memorandum, with 12 and 13 also being related to the allegations.

The claimant responded in the following way (C34 and see also C59):

“- Neil Alford and Anjum Pervez have been proposed as replacement supervisors for Xiahong Peng, but the change has not yet been submitted to the Research Degrees Committee

This is not a breach on my part.

This is a requirement by the University and the EPSRC that the School ensure that a supervisor is available to supervise my research work.

- It was agreed in the meeting of the 23.07.01 that Perry Xiao would be added as a supervisor

The meeting on the 23.07.01 was a meeting with Prof. Bridge regarding a grievance I invoked as a member of staff. I attended the meeting as a member of staff, I insisted in the meeting that it would be inappropriate for Prof. Bridge to discuss research student issues at the meeting and I wrote to Prof. Bridge following the meeting to making the same point again in writing [documentation available].

This is a breach of University regulations by Prof. Bridge in his role of investigating a grievance I lodged almost a year ago.

– I have refused to sign the papers on change of supervision.

- Untrue. I have asked that University regulations and EPSRC regulations are checked to ensue that the supervisors proposed meet the standards required by the University an by the EPSRC. [documentation available], This is a reasonable request, which after a considerable period still remains unresolved. I also pointed out that University and EPSRC records should be consulted beforehand to ensure that everything is in order. I have written to the EPSRC myself to resolve the issue, and they are investigating the matter [documentation available]

- I have gone to some lengths to solve the supervision problem myself, going so far as to suggest individuals from other universities as external supervisors.

- Dr. Anjum Pervez and Prof. Bryan Bridge have unreasonably pressured me to sign the formal papers, and have refused to resolve the queries I have put to them. I have written a statement which clearly puts forward issues which need to be resolved. I have had no reply to this.” [Last paragraph omitted from second response, C59]

I summarise that part of the transcript that relates to these allegations (D19 and ff.). Dr Farwell puts to him that he is “making a lot of play about not at present having a supervisor”. The claimant replies that that is another issue of grievance because the School has not assigned a supervisor and when “they found out that I did not have a supervisor, then they tried to give me the first supervisor that comes to mind.” He confirms that he did not have a supervisor, that is “a statement of fact.” Dr Farwell asked him whether he had refused to accept the supervisors offered and he replied “not at all”. There then followed the passages that relate to his claim that the School “got into a state of panic” and “just wanted to get rid of the problem” when the EPSRC wrote to them. In the same passage the claimant deals with his contacts with the EPSRC. The claimant then refers again to this being “retaliation”. He continued by referring to what he said was the issues which needed to be clarified first. The more important one was whether the supervisors proposed met the requirements for PhD supervision (D20 central column). He stated: “that it is my suspicion and strong view that Anjum Pervez clearly does not meet the requirements for primary supervision.”

In so far as this allegation is concerned Dr Farwell found in paragraphs 5.4.9:

“TB has refused to cooperate with the addition of Dr Xiao to his supervisory team. This has resulted in gross disruption to the work of the School and to the work of those involved, in particular the supervisory team and the Head of School. The extent of the disruption is also evident in TB’s own work. He has not made any progress on his research since his ten month report (signed off by the faculty on 24 August 2000). No progress has been made by TB despite attempts by the staff in the school to support TB and to advise him how to move forward with his research. This is evident in notes of the research progress meetings and through recent meetings with Professor Bob Imhof, Research Degrees Coordinator in the School. The EPSRC had also accepted that time is being lost by TB in so far as his PHD research is concerned and as a result offered to put his studentship in abeyance. They stated in a letter dated 27 September 2001 from Mrs GS Stephens, Student Awards Manager that

“it is clear from correspondence from Thomas, and conversations with Professor Neil Alford that the situation is taking up a considerable amount of time for all parties involved.””

 In paragraph 5.4.10 Dr Farwell concluded:

“ that TB’s behaviour and attitude towards his supervisory team amounts to his being deliberately obstructive.”

 I turn to the website allegations. Although it is not clear whether it was Professor Bridge who brought to the attention of Dr Farwell the existence of the material on the website, I shall assume it was him. I declined to take into account the statement of Pierre Lebrun which was not before Dr Farwell and covered matters about which the claimant did or could have given “evidence” to Dr Farwell. The material placed on the website can be found in the claimant’s bundle (353-357). The address was:

“telecomms.sbu.ac.uk/~tb/opinion/Terrorist.html.

The letters “sbu.ac.uk” identifies the South Bank University. “Telecomms” refers to the research group headed by Dr Pervez. The claimant had been appointed the administrator or had assumed the role. To help me understand the claimant’s role, Mr Hyams drew my attention to the following exchange during a meeting on 19 June with Professor Alford and Dr Pervez when a number of “problems” being raised by the claimant were discussed (claimant’s bundle 226):

“Problem: (Thomas)

I have been doing (informally) the job of system administrator and academic responsible for the lab internet. This work involves fixing daily problems that occur, advising students on the use of the network and upgrading and/or maintaining software. This work has been extremely difficult due to a significant amount of obstruction by Alan Nigrin. If I am to continue in this role I need to have this role made more formal and to establish a protocol so as to avoid conflict of responsibilities with Alan Nigrin.

Response: (Anjim)

We can remove you from this responsibility straight away.”

The “charges” set out in paragraph three of the report alleged that the claimant: “misused and made unauthorised use of computers and networks”, “had published a piece which was potentially offensive” and “had published a piece that was potentially detrimental to the University’s relationship with the community.” (Claimant’s bundle 326)

Dr Farwell wrote in a letter to the claimant dated 28 September 2001 (claimant’s bundle 306):

“I am writing to inform you that it has been brought to my attention that you have been using the South Bank University to publish material expressing your own opinion on a matter outside the normal business of South Bank University. I refer specifically to the webpage with addresses: [address supplied].

 The publication of this material is a breach of the University’s Code of Practice for Web Authors and also the legal requirements for web authors.

 I have instructed the head of Computer Services Department to suspend your access to all computer services until further notice and also to delete your website with address: [address supplied]

 Your failure to observe the University’s Code of Practice for Web Authors is a further breach of the Student Discipline Procedure, which we will discuss at your interview under the Procedure which has already been set for Friday 4 October.”

By a later letter dated 3 October she wrote (claimant’s bundle 306 ):

“I am writing further to my letter to you of 28 September. In particular, I am writing to detail allegations against you under the Student Discipline Procedure. The allegations set out below are in addition to those in my letter of 14 August 2001.

The further allegations against you are that the publications of the material on the web page (address supplied) has contravened a number of rules (se Legal Requirements for Web Authors and the Code of Practice for Web Authors, attached):-

i.

The use of the website was not for bona fide educational use. No authorisation had been given for other use and therefore you did not have requisite permission to publish the piece.

ii.

The piece contained political and religious views outside of normal South Bank University business.

You had therefore misused and made unauthorised use of University computers and networks, which is a breach of the Student Discipline Procedure (see paragraph 1.4 of that Procedure). The piece is also potentially offensive and therefore likely to be detrimental to the University’s relationship with the community (see also paragraphs 1.8 and 1.13 of the Procedure).

In setting out these allegations, I would also wish to state that South Bank University respects your right to your own political opinions and your right to express those opinions. The University could not and would not seek to restrict your right to express your opinions outside the normal South Bank University environment. However, the University needs to balance your right of self-expression against the need to ensure that staff and other students are not offended or distressed, and the need to ensue that teaching and learning are not disrupted in any way.

Expression of your political opinions is not a necessary part of your work at the University. The University does not, therefore, consent to its property being used as a forum for you to advance and publish these opinions. The reason for this is not because the University objects to those opinions, but the University takes the view that it is reasonable foreseeable that students and staff will be distressed and upset by your views and this will lead to unnecessary disruption of teaching, learning and administration.”

By letter the claimant responded to the allegations (claimant’s bundle 310-313). He described the outline of the piece:

“i.

Scholarly criticism of statements commonly found in the media re. WTC incident

ii.

Individuals who planned & executed WTC incident are educated and intelligent – established fact

iii.

Individuals who planned & executed WTC are of a sound mind – proof provided.

iv.

Religion is at best a minor factor – evidence provided.

v.

Motivational factors. Historical factors. Established statements of fact.

vi.

Heroism: Heroes or Villains – it depends?

vii.

Misguided Heroes?

viii.

Respect for national self determination –one of the objectives of the UN

ix.

Examples of American & European abuse of power. Factual Cases (indisputed).

x.

What to do?

a.

Self-Criticism – well established as a good thing.

b.

Objective & representative global institutions – one of the stated objective of UN”

To the allegation that his use of the website was not for bona fide educational use, he replied that an analysis of the web pages available on the Telecomms web server clearly shows as its purpose as educational. This was not the allegation being put forward. He wote that it was “a well established academic practice that the personal home page of an academic member of staff or student contains personal items” and he gave examples. As to the allegation that he did not have permission, he wrote that all of the documents on the server “did have the permission of the designated administrator [i.e. himself] to whom this job had been delegated by the Head of the School.” As to the allegation that the material contained political and religious views outside of normal SBU business he made a number of points including the fact that he himself had approved the piece. He denied that it contained religious views (and made a point about the use of the word “and”) or that it contained political views outside normal University business. As to the allegation that the piece was potentially offensive and therefore likely to be detrimental to the University’s relationship with the community he objected to the words “potentially offensive” and claimed that was being done amounted to censorship. He denied also that the piece expressed his opinion “outside of the normal business of the University”.

It was at the second interview that he was questioned about these allegations. (claimant’s bundle 321-323). The claimant repeated what he had said in his written response. During the course of the hearing Dr Farwell stated that the decision to take action against the claimant as a result of the publication of the opinion piece was hers and not that of Professor Bridge (claimant’s bundle 323). During the interview the claimant repeated that “he had not had a supervisor for a year” and “so he had been unable to discuss this, or his work, with anyone at the University.”

Dr Farwell stated in paragraph 5.5 that she had “no doubt that these three allegations can be substantiated.” She went on to say that the publication of the opinion piece on the web was itself evidence of the fact that he had misused and made unauthorised use of the University computers and network. She wrote:

“TB’s lack of judgment about whether the piece was offensive was evident in his interview with RF on 12 October. See the attached notes.”

She wrote that the claimant did not seem to have regard to all the circumstances when considering what people may find offensive when material is posted on the University website. She refers in sub paragraphs (e) and (f) to what she describes as a further lack of judgement. She concluded that the above points were evidence that the publication of the piece was potentially detrimental to the University’s relationship with the community.

In paragraph 5.6 Dr Farwell concluded that she believed that the claimant:

“has engaged in gross misconduct by: a) repeatedly obstructing the business of the university; b) publishing the opinion piece on the web; c) misusing his EPSRC studentship and spending his time on other matters as opposed to legitimate research.”

 In the final paragraph Dr Farwell said that in her view the breaches were so serious that the matter should be referred to the Deputy Vice Chancellor with the recommendation that his studentship be terminated and that he be excluded from the university. That referral led to the challenged decision.

In his detailed statement of grounds the claimant put forward some fourteen reasons supporting his allegation that the defendant conducted its investigation against him in a way contrary to the policy of the University in a way without regard to natural justice and in an unreasonable way. Only two of those survived the hearing before Gage J, namely the second and eighth. The second alleges “SBU failed to investigate the claim made by TB that the allegations were put forward as retaliation.” The eighth alleged that “SBU knowingly used falsified records of official meetings with TB.” (A12-A13)

In its response to these two the defendant stated:

“The complaints against the claimant was (sic) investigated purely on the basis of whether his conduct as a research student had breached the SDP [The Disciplinary Procedures]. There were no procedural defects in the way the investigation was conducted. Dr Farwell was aware of the claimant’s view about the motives behind the complaint against him.” (paragraph 36,A26)

That response was specifically directed at paragraph 5 of a list of alleged breaches of natural justice relied upon by the claimant when he sought to appeal the decision to terminate his studentship and excluded him from the University. Paragraph 5 (claimant’s bundle 336) states:

“A student complaint about the behaviour of Bryan Bridge was not investigated, even though it had been submitted to the Dean. It was completely ignored with no reply of any kind. This is a breach of University Policy and Procedure. A Memorandum produced by Bryan Bridge [dated 27.07.2001] was produced within a week of a complaint I raised about the behaviour of Bryan Bridge in a meeting on 23.07.2001. Given point 3, it follows necessarily that the allegations made by Bryan Bridge were made in retaliation to complaints raised about his behaviour. As the Memorandum makes direct reference to the complaints raised, it may be seen as a reply to the complaint. As such it is in breach of University Policy, being specifically prohibited. Failing to investigate complaints and retaliating on the basis of complaints made is also a breach of natural justice.”

In “point 3” the claimant had stated:

“I have verbal reports from witnesses and evidence in the transcripts of research progress meetings that state Bryan Bridge asked members of staff in the School to present incriminating evidence on me in the week of 23.07.2001.”

Later on the claimant stated:

“… he called members of staff to solicit allegations of breaches.”

In paragraph 12 of the affidavit prepared by the claimant for the purposes of these proceedings, he wrote:

“As part of my employment as a lecturer I was put under pressure to ‘fix grades’. I refused and the matter eventually led to a formal complaint under University bullying procedures. The complaint was initially heard by Prof. Bridge, who to my astonishment threatened me in a crude and direct way with termination and expulsion as a research student if I pursued the complaint. On this basis I made a further complaint against Prof. Bridge both as a student and staff complaint. Immediately after I raised this further complaint, I was informed informally that Prof. Bridge had contacted any member of staff who I had worked with to request ‘dirt’: any information that could be used to criticise my work.”

It is then stated that four named members of staff complied and three refused.

The claimant was refused permission to apply for judicial review on paper by Sullivan J. He was subsequently granted permission on limited grounds by Gage J following a hearing at which the claimant was unrepresented (D28-D41). A proposed amended statement of grounds has now been drafted by counsel for the claimant (A47–A56).

Gage J (paragraph 13) summarised the claimant’s argument as developed in his skeleton argument. Professor Bridge’s complaints against the claimant’s conduct in the memorandum dated 27 July 2001 were activated by malice and in retaliation against the claimant’s allegations of “grade fixing”. Dr Farwell should have waited for these allegations to be investigated before completing her enquiry. In paragraph 16 Gage J stated:

“In my view it is at least arguable that these allegations [grade fixing] ought to have been investigated as part of the disciplinary proceedings against the claimant. If there was any force in them it could, as Dr Farwell appears to recognise, have affected her investigations. The fact that she was aware of the allegations is not the same as knowing whether or not they were justified. Accordingly in my judgment there is some force in this ground; it is at least arguable.”

In paragraph 30 Gage J dealt with other grounds but concluded that they added nothing to the ground considered in paragraph 16.

Those conclusions of Gage J have been converted into two grounds. Ground 1 claims that the defendant “failed, or failed properly, to take into account a relevant factor, namely that Professor Bridge……may have been wrongly motivated in initiating, pursuing and promoting disciplinary proceedings against the claimant as a student … .” (A47) The facts said to support that allegation are set out in two sub-paragraphs. Sub-paragraph (1) refers to the claimant’s allegations of grade fixing by members of the department. Sub-paragraph (2) refers to a grievance which the claimant had raised with the defendant “about the manner in which Professor Bridge had treated him, or failed to address, or to address properly the his complaints about the manner in which other members of the Department’s staff had treated him both as a colleague and as a student.”

The defendant accepts that both sub-paragraphs reflect the grounds upon which Gage J gave the claimant permission to appeal.

Gage J did not, so it appears to me, expressly give permission on the issue as to whether or not the defendant had failed or failed properly to take this matter into account. The defendant takes no point on that.

Ground 2 states:

“Further, or alternatively, the defendant acted irrationally in failing to investigate the claimant’s allegations that Professor Bridge had been so wrongly motivated, before determining whether the complaints against the claimant as a PHD student were well founded.”

During the early part of the hearing I gave permission to the claimant to amend his grounds to include these as grounds 1 and 2. With consent, I later permitted a further amendment to make it clear that the complaint is against the defendant “acting through Dr Farwell, or otherwise”. In fact, as I have already said, the arguments concentrated only on the conclusions of Dr Farwell.

The thrust of the submission on these two grounds is that the decision of the defendant to exclude the claimant may have been different if Dr Farwell had taken into account, or properly taken into account, what is said to be a relevant factor, namely that Professor Bridge may have been wrongly motivated in initiating, pursuing and promoting disciplinary proceedings against the claimant as a student by the fact that the claimant had made allegations of grade fixing and/or had raised a grievance against Professor Bridge about the manner in which the Professor had treated the claimant.

Dr Farwell’s conclusion about the first three allegations is not attacked on the grounds of rationality. It is not now submitted that Dr Farwell’s conclusions on the website allegations are irrational or that she had pre-judged the issue. The claimant was refused permission to argue either of these points. (Paragraphs 34-41, D38-D40) Mr Hyams accepted that the only way that any malice on the part of Professor Bridge could affect Dr Farwell’s website conclusions is the effect that the malice might have had on other proved charges.

It is submitted, however, that Dr Farwell might have reached a different conclusion on the allegations if she had done that which it is said that she ought to have done regarding the claimant’s complaints against Professor Bridge. It is also alleged that the claimant was denied a fair hearing on allegation 3 for the reasons set out in ground 3 and in the proposed ground 4.

The second ground found by Gage J to be arguable related to the minutes of three Research Group meetings dated 1, 8, 16 August 2001. It was the claimant’s case that Dr Farwell had acted on information contained in “false minutes of meetings and he was given no opportunity to make representations about them.” (Paragraph 17) Gage J held (paragraph 22):

“It seems to be at least arguable that fairness dictated that if, as Dr Farwell accepted, the claimant had not seen her before she should have made it quite clear to him that she was going to consider them and that before doing so he should, if he desired, take the opportunity of making a response to the contents of those minutes. I think it is arguable that by simply telling him generally that he had the right to submit further representations without making specific reference to these minutes, that was not sufficient to draw his attention to the importance which he might subsequently attach to those minutes.”

This second ground now forms ground 3 of the proposed amended grounds:

“The defendant acted unfairly when Dr Farwell… failed to indicate in clear terms to the claimant that she was proposing to rely upon the “minutes” produced following meetings between the claimant and 1) Professor Alford and 2) Dr Pervez and 3) Dr Xiao on 1 August 2001, 8 August 2001 and 16 August 2001 and accordingly failed to give him a proper opportunity to respond to the allegations made in those minutes.”

I see no merit in this ground. I have set out the minutes of the meetings as approved by all present other than the claimant. It seems clear that the claimant had a copy of minutes of the 15 August meeting at the 16 August meeting (see paragraph 45 of this judgment). He appears also to have had a copy of minutes of the 8 August meeting at the time, see the passage from the letter of 16 November set out below. He knew minutes were being taken. He had his own covert recordings of the meetings. On October 5 he was given copies of all three minutes when he said that he did not have them (D15, left hand column). If he had wanted to prove that the minutes were  false, he could have done so. He did not do so at that stage, but waited until 16 November to mention the fact that he had transcripts (330). On that day he wrote to Karen Stephenson:

“A set of false minutes of research progress meetings have recently been brought to my attention. “

That must be reference to minutes handed to him on October 5. The letter continues:

“The minutes refer to meetings held between Prof. Neil Alford, Dr. Anjum Pervez and myself. These meetings did take place, and their purpose was to discuss supervision of my research work. It was agreed by all parties that the meetings would be official meetings and that they should be formal in nature, and therefore would be minuted. Minutes are a true record of a meeting, to which all parties must agree. Outside of an official meeting, no reference may be made to proceedings that do not form part of the true record. This specific point was made, and was agreed to by all parties. Minutes of all but the last of the meetings were actually taken, produced, and sent to all parties. The minutes were taken and produced by Dr. Pervez (although Dr. Pervez has failed to produce the minutes for the last meeting, even after repeated requests for him to distribute them). These minutes are available as part of the record, and it must be noted that the work ‘minutes’ is used as the title. Copies of the minutes were sent to me, and I did have the opportunity to correct them. Copies of the false minutes were not sent to me, and I was not informed of their existence by any of the parties. These false minutes also do not accurately reflect the proceedings of the meetings. There are deliberate falsifications, fabrications and deliberate omissions.”

I do not follow: “Copies of the false minutes were not sent to me, and I was not informed of their existence by any of the parties.” The letter continued:

“I have also recently been made aware of a transcript of the actual meetings. The transcripts provide conclusive evidence that the false minutes are a deliberate falsification of the proceedings. These transcripts are not a part of the official record, but copies may be provided on request.”

It was the claimant who had covertly recorded the meetings. What he meant by: “I have also recently been made aware of a transcript of the actual meetings”, I do not know. The letter goes on:

“These false minutes were not available to me at the time of the disciplinary interview. If they had been available at the time of the disciplinary interview, I would have had the opportunity to show that they were false and improper, and that this clearly would have demonstrably affected the outcome of the disciplinary interview.

The basis of the case against me is that I have disrupted the functioning of the University by not accepting the supervisors nominated by the University. These minutes show that the members of staff nominated to supervise me held meetings with me not to discuss the supervision of my research work but rather to gather incriminating evidence for the purpose of supporting a recommendation for disciplinary measures. When these members of staff failed to find anything incriminating in the content of the actual meeting, they simply invented it.”

I do not follow the first sentence of the first paragraph in this passage: “These false minutes were not available to me at the time of the disciplinary interview.” As to the last two sentences of the second paragraph, this seems to me to be a baseless allegation.

It must, in my view, have been obvious to the claimant that Dr Farwell might well rely on the minutes. The relationship between the claimant and his supervisors was central to the case against him. I see nothing unfair in the way that the claimant was treated in so far as the minutes are concerned. The history of this case shows that the claimant is well able to defend himself and well able to take all possible points.

In ground 4 the claimant seeks to add a further ground about the evidence of Professor Imhof (dealt with in paragraph 33 of claimant’s skeleton argument and in paragraphs 18-21 of a supplementary skeleton argument ). Permission was not given to argue this ground. It was raised in the claimant’s affidavit (A37 paragraph 21) and there is a brief reference to it in the claimant’s skeleton argument before Gage J (paragraph 12.21 and see also 11.11). It was not raised in the claimant’s appeal against the findings of Dr Farwell (claimant’s bundle, 330-338). During the hearing I refused permission to add this ground. Dr Farwell refers to Prof Imhof in paragraph 5.4.9 (paragraph 120 above). In paragraph 3 of the statement of Professor Imhof (the only relevant paragraph) there is a short account of what he told Dr Farwell. Even if the claimant had been told what is contained in paragraph 3, there is nothing which the claimant could have said which would have affected the conclusion on allegation 3, which conclusion was not only “not irrational” but in my view overwhelmingly supported by the evidence, much of which came from the claimant himself.

I turn now to the claimant’s grievance against Dr Protheroe which features heavily in the material upon which the claimant relied before Dr Farwell (C13 and ff. and employee timeline C45 and ff.).

What the claimant described as his initial claim of harassment is contained in a long email from him to Dr David Protheroe a member of the School teaching staff dated 27 November 2000 (Claimant’s bundle 56-58) . In the time line this is mentioned after some three pages of material relating to Dr Protheroe. A copy was sent to a number of other members of the staff including Professor Bridge. Although there is reference to this email in the material forwarded by the claimant to Dr Farwell (C14), it is not clear whether Dr Farwell received this document. The email is entitled: “Workplace Harassment on MscPrep Introduction to Programming Unit”. In the opening paragraph the claimant alleges that Dr Protheroe is intentionally subjecting him to workplace harassment. The alleged evidence to support the case of workplace harassment is contained in some nine paragraphs. An illustration of the claimant’s style can be found in the first few sentences of paragraph one:

“On 27.11.2000 you sent me the following email: ‘If you are unwilling to do this then please say so immediately- you need not ATTEND [my emphasis] any further classes and another member of staff will teach the remainder of the unit.’ I must insist that we pay close attention to the word “Attend”. I do not “attend” classes, I am the lecturer, and as a lecturer I give (or teach) these classes.”

The thrust of the alleged harassment relates to various instructions which had (allegedly) been given to the claimant by Dr Protheroe about the manner in which the claimant was teaching a course. For example the claimant had been instructed to teach only one particular language. The claimant disagreed with that instruction (see paragraph 2). Following further emails (59-61), on the 26 January 2001 the claimant made a formal complaint by email of harassment.

Dr Allen Howson, another member of staff, prepared an “end of unit report” (claimant’s bundle 66) on the course being taught by the claimant. According to Dr Howson the required assessment was one initial assignment worth 10%, a mini test worth 30% and a final assignment worth 70%. The report continues:

“However the lecturer decided to follow his own assessment profile of two mini tests and six assignments. This as can be expected put considerable strain on the students who were far from happy making their feelings felt to me as Unit Co-Coordinator, the Course Director and ultimately the Head of Department.

As a result of this horrendous over assessment it was decided to take the best mini test mark and the best assignment mark and combine them with the mini test weighted at 40% and the assignment weighted at 60%.

This assessment profile resulted in 14 out of the 17 students passing and 3 failing. These three students failed to completed the course. All work, both assignment and mini test was submitted by email and is proving difficult to obtain copies from the lecturer concerned.”

On 9 July 2001 the claimant sent an email to Professor Bridge (C 14):

“I sent an email to Dave Protheroe on Wednesday November 29 2000 – 1.02am and cc’d to you regarding work placement. As we have had a number of meetings both formal and informal prior to this and that I have made my position reasonably clear on a number of occasions I felt at the time that we had exhausted stage 1 of the grievance procedures. This email should have been taken as stage 2 in the grievance procedure. As I had no response to this email, by definition the matter remains unresolved, and consequently both stages 1 and 2 of the grievance procedure have been exhausted.

I sent an email to you directly (Friday January 26 2001 – 12.10pm) as required by stage 3 of the grievance procedure. I noted that I have no response to this email (as of 9.07.2001). As the grievance procedure makes no allowance for this I am forced to reiterate my position that I wish to formally invoke the grievance procedure (policy and procedure for dealing with complaints of bullying) at stage 3.”

Professor Bridge replied on 19 July (C17):

“Your email below was sent while I was away for one week on business.

I do not regard communication by email as constituting a proper written part of activities under the Grievance Procedure. I would count it as informal discussion and there have been many informal oral discussions between myself, yourself and other staff members. There has also been one formal written memorandum to you from myself concerning assessment procedures.

Therefore I believe that we are at the end of stage 1, but no further, and if you wish to proceed to stage 2 please request in writing (a hard copy not please formally addressed to me and not an email) a personal interview with myself as Head of School.”

To that email there was a reply complaining of the approach that Professor Bridge was taking (Claimant’s bundle 69-70).

A few hours after the email from Professor Bridge on the 19 July another member of staff Kate Viscardi made a complaint against the claimant. (Claimant’s bundle 71).

On the 23 July a meeting took place between Professor Bridge and the claimant. The meeting, described by the claimant as “fraudulent”, led to two emails, one on 25 July (C21) and a fuller one dated 26 July (C25-27) described as superseding the first which had been written after a night during which the claimant had not slept well. During the hearing we concentrated on the second email. I shall return to it in detail later. It contains the allegations against Professor Bridge upon which the claimant relies to set aside the challenged decision.

By email dated the 30 July (claimant’s bundle 86-87) the claimant was told that on Friday 17 August from 10am to 12noon he would have a personal hearing with Professor Bridge about the claimant’s complaints against David Protheroe. He was told that on Wednesday 29 August from 10am to 12noon Professor Bridge would interview David Protheroe. He was also told which documents constituted the complaint and he asked whether he had any further documents. On the 15 August he stated that he wished to call 12 witnesses and then there were further emails about when the witnesses would be called.

The notes of the “stage 2 grievance hearing” held on 17 August (claimant’s bundle 91-96) show that no evidence was called to support the allegation of bullying. That hearing was followed by emailed complaints about the alleged abrupt termination of the hearing, an allegation that witnesses were ignored, alleged problems with receiving a record of the hearing and an alleged failure to produce a report.

Professor Bridge reported on the 26 September on the claimant’s allegations about David Protheroe. He concluded:

“Your allegations of harassment are unfounded. They are unfounded to such a degree that I consider the allegations to be vexatious and suggest to the employment relations officer to whom this report is copied that the University procedure should be reviewed. There is also, in my view, a prima facie case that you have been harassing a number of staff by sending them large volumes of unnecessary emails, although these staff have not alleged harassment officially. As a part-time lecturer you have consistently acted in a way contrary to School/University policy in a number of areas. As such you have ignored the reasonable instructions of the Head of the School. If you had still been working to a part-time teacher contract at this time I would have invoked the Staff Disciplinary Procedure.

It is my recommendation to the Dean that you should not be permitted to teach again in SBU and that your email account should be immediately suspended.”

There then follows what is said by Professor Bridge to be the reasons for the conclusions:

“The basis of your case is that Dr Protheroe had no right to intervene in your teaching activities because your teaching was good. Therefore his intervention constituted harassment.

However Dr Protheroe had every right to intervene regardless of your teaching if, in good faith, he believed it was causing problems with students. I am in no doubt that he acted at all times in good faith and in a courteous manner, both orally and in writing. I include the statement “courteous manner” even though you have not actually questioned his manner but simply his right to intervene at all.

The reason he had the right to intervene in good faith is because he is the Tutor of the course on which you taught. In that capacity by delegated authority from myself he had supervisory responsibilities towards you as a part-time hourly paid lecturer.

If, however, I had accepted your premise that good teaching does not warrant intervention on any account your allegations of harassment would still have been unfounded. They would have been unfounded because there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that your teaching was very poor.

There is also overwhelming evidence that your behaviour as a part-time lecturer was unprofessional in contrary to School/University policy in a number of areas. This provided another ground for Dr Protheroe (and other staff) to intervene.”

There then follows a summary of the hearing held on the 17 August. The first sentence states:

“At the hearing it was clear that none of your witnesses were aware that they were there to support case against Dr Protheroe. They appeared to believed they were there to defend your teaching per se.”

In his conclusions Professor Bridge stated:

“Your allegation of harassment has also to be seen in the context that you have persistently ignored the advice of several other staff, not just Dr Protheroe, all of them in positions of much greater teaching experience than yourself. They had been in positions of supervisory responsibility over you in accordance with the School management structure, as laid out in chapter 4 of the School handbook. So here you have completely ignored a School policy and procedures.

I take a particularly serious view of you changing the time of evening lectures, including arranging sessions up to 10pm, lecturing in the vacation and ignoring week 13. This is contrary to School/University procedures. Part time students, especially, have to coordinate their domestic and employment arrangements with their teaching timetable and need to plan this in advance. Ad hoc timetable changes are bound to cause severe difficulties for some students.”

There then follows in the bundle prepared by the claimant (104 and ff) various letters and emails about an appeal.

There was an appeal hearing on 9 October presided over by Professor Clare. It was pointed out that the appeal was being heard “on an exceptional basis” given that the claimant was no longer a member of staff. At the hearing, the claimant was given an opportunity to explain why he was saying that Professor Bridges’s report was wrong. Towards the conclusion of the hearing the claimant stated: (C 111)

“that the reason for David Protheroe’s behaviour, and the insistence that all lectures and assignments were the same as the previous years was that there was corruption. Students were unable to do the work and were encouraged to copy the work from the previous year in order to get an acceptable grade. This was the reason there was no feedback until the units were finished.”

Professor Clare stated that these were very serious allegations and that he would look for evidence of them.

On 15 October 2001 Professor Clare reported on the claimant’s appeal against the findings of Professor Bridge (claimant’s bundle 112-113). He wrote:

“The conclusion is that the appeal is dismissed. Prof. Bridge’s report of Stage 2 displays a thorough investigation of the case and its conclusions are supported by the evidence specified above.

 In reaching this conclusion I note the following points

1.

Mr. Bangert’s employment as a HPL is terminated.

2.

There is evidence of Mr. Bangert’s harassment of other members of staff in both the tone and volume of the plethora of emails sent.

3.

Prof. Bridge’s comments on the possibility of his taking disciplinary action against Mr. Bangert were he still to be employed are appropriate given the fact that Mr. Bangert did not follow School and University policies, in particular the lack of adherence to the unit guide.

4.

The investigation of the grievance brought to light Mr. Bangert’s non-adherence to the School and University policies which is why those issues have now been raised.

5.

Dr. Protheroe had every right to intervene and ask Mr Bangert to adhere to the unit guide. It is the duty of a Course Director to act on student complaints.

6.

There is no evidence in the documentation provided of Dr. Protheroe being discourteous, harrying or bullying in his approaches to Mr. Bangert.

7.

There is evidence that Mr Bangert’s quality of teaching was poor in that the material and amount of assessment was not appropriate to the target audience. Transcripts of the Stage 2 hearings and the Scheme Board minutes of 22/2/01 support this conclusion. The statements provided by the US academics are not relevant because a) they had not refereed Mr. Banger’s performance and b) they do not appear to be set in the context of the special needs of the MSc prep course students.

8.

There is evidence that Dr. Protheroe and other senior academics from the School were willing to offer support and advice to Mr. Bangert but that this was rejected.

9.

Dr. Protheroe had every right to remove the non-university approved Windows 2000 from the lab computers as it was interfering with other software. There is evidence that Mr. Bangert was informed of this.

10.

The Stage 2 hearing was to investigate evidence of bullying by Dr. Protheroe. Two hours was ample time for this and evidence from the first three witnesses could throw no light on the case under investigation. There is no reason to suggest that any further witnesses would have been able to comment on Dr Protheroe’s alleged harassment.

 In conclusion, I find sympathy with the view that the allegations are vexatious and would support a call for the revision of university procedures. An enormous amount of documentation was submitted, none of which appeared to support the case and much of which indicates that Dr. Protheroe acted in a proper and reasonable manner.”

During the course of the hearing I asked whether Dr Farwell had seen this report before completing hers. She was asked orally and said that she had. Contrary to the submissions made to me by Mr Hyams both during and, by letter, after the hearing, it seems inconceivable to me that she did not read it. She realised the significance of the allegations being made by the claimant as the following passage shows (D15 3^rd column and see also D14, 2^nd column and the reference to other procedures in the University):

“I hear what you’ve said, and obviously the substance of what you are saying is a very serious allegation against a member of staff. And so, … which I know is partly being dealt with elsewhere, but it certainly would go on record because clearly if what you are saying is substantiated and all I have is your version of events, but if it were to be substantiated it would clearly have very serious impacts on what is happening today.”

I turn to the ground relating to “grade fixing”. The thrust of the claimant’s case is that Professor Bridge’s complaints against the claimant’s conduct in the memorandum dated 27 July 2001 may have been activated by malice and in retaliation against the claimant’s allegations of “grade fixing”.

I have already quoted paragraph 12 of the claimant’s affidavit:

“As part of my employment as a lecturer I was put under pressure to ‘fix grades’. I refused and the matter eventually led to a formal complaint under University bullying procedures.”

Some time was spent on this allegation at the outset of the hearing before me. Grade fixing was described as the improper fixing of grades by others and the use of improper pressure by Dr Protheroe upon the claimant to get him to fix grades on the students whom he had taught. It is only the latter to which the claimant referred in his affidavit. In order to make his case, the claimant must show that Professor Bridge was aware that the claimant was making an allegation that he had been required to fix grades, before the Professor wrote the 27 July memorandum.

I turn to the claimant’s argument as developed in the skeleton argument at paragraph 7. There is, it is said, only one document in the bundle which predates Professor Bridge’s memorandum “which explicitly refers to “grade fixing”. That is an email from the claimant to Dr Peng, the first supervisor of the claimant’s PHD research (claimant’s bundle 20). The email relates to the grading of the work of students who were being taught by the claimant in his role as a part-time lecturer. The claimant states in the email that he is willing to reduce “the log book requirements to three experiments” but states that if he is responsible for grading “I will keep my grading scheme.” He goes on:

“The main reason I am using this scheme is that in my experience students often do one experiment in the lab and then they copy the results from the other experiments from other students. Perhaps lecturers have turned a blind eye to this in the past but I am not willing to do this…..I have designed my grading scheme to avoid any problems like this.”

If, as the claimant says, he was making a claim that he was required to fix grades, one would have expected to see it in the formal and informal complaints of harassment made against Dr Protheroe by the claimant, in the claimant’s material before Dr Farwell and in the interviews with her. There are no such references. Mr Hyams accepted that there is no contemporaneous document which suggested that Professor Bridge was aware as at July 27of the claimant’s allegation of grade fixing.

I was told that the claimant was going to raise it during the meeting with Professor Bridge on 17 August but did not do because Professor Bridge brought the meeting to a close. I find that not credible. Such a serious allegation, if true, would have been made before particularly by this claimant.

In my judgment the passage which I have just quoted from the claimant’s affidavit is, on the material before me, simply untrue. It formed the basis of the application for the application for permission to apply for judicial review and was relied on by Gage J. It should never have done. I reject it.

There is no doubt that the claimant, from the date of receiving the memorandum of July 27, has alleged that Professor Bridge was acting maliciously and in retaliation for the complaints made by the claimant in his emails of 25 and 26 July. For an example, in an email dated 27 July to Dr Farwell he alleged that the July 27 memorandum was “retaliation against an employee for making a complaint” (C 12). The Professor, so the claimant alleges, also set out to dig up dirt on the claimant (see claimant’s affidavit, paragraph 12). By “digging dirt” he meant seeking only negative information (see e.g. C 57). The notes of the interviews as well as the transcripts (see e.g. D15) show that the claimant repeated his claim on a number of occasions. The notes of the first interview read (Claimant’s bundle, 315):

“There is a long and outstanding grievance raised by me as a member of staff. I am a research student and an hourly paid lecturer, this is still ongoing. I had a meeting with BB to discuss the grievance. One of the outcomes of that was that BB threatened me to drop the grievance ‘or else I am going to do this, this and this’. I was rather intimidated by this and wrote down these threats. In the meeting I said this was wrong and wrote telling BB what the threats were and asking him to discuss them, but I did not get an invitation to discuss them. I then took a stage 1 grievance against BB. His reply was the memo dated the 27^th July (item above) I heard from other staff that when I sent him the letters asking him to respond to the perceived threats he ‘hit the roof’ and asked members of staff to submit anything compromising on me. I have no direct evidence of this but would be able to prove it in a more formal context. It is my view and my interpretation of the bullying procedures that this action [of BB] is in retaliation.”

Mr Hamilton argued that an analysis of passages in the transcript suggested that the claimant was alleging exaggeration rather than dishonesty on the part of Professor Bridge. Mr Hyams did not accept this interpretation and submitted that the claimant was alleging dishonesty. After taking instructions, he confirmed that it was the claimant’s case that Professor Bridge had acted dishonestly. It seems clear to me and must have been clear to Dr Farwell that the claimant was alleging dishonesty.

I turn to the email of 26 July 2001 (C25) copied to personnel in Human Resources which, on the claimant’s case, leads to the retaliatory action of sending the July 27 memorandum.

The opening paragraph reads:

“I feel that a number of issues have arisen on the basis of the informal meeting which you called at 14:30, (23.07.01) {the segment of the meeting that dealt with the bullying complaint}. I feel that some of these issues are sufficiently serious that they might lead to a further complaint on the same procedure. I do not wish to make such a point needlessly or without proper grounds and I fully accept that my own feelings and memory regarding the events leading up to the meeting and the meeting itself are subjective and therefore it is possible that I misinterpreted what you have said. As you have indicated that you will be available tomorrow at 14:00 I feel that it would be useful for us to have a meeting at that time to go over the items of concern (outlined below). I would like specifically to be reassured that I will not be victimized, suffer detriment or fail to be protected from intimidation or bullying resulting from making a complaint. I must make clear, however, that this meeting should be specifically on this issue.”

After setting out passages from the University “policy on bullying”, he gives one instance of what he feels to be retaliatory action, namely the Kate Viscardi complaint against him.

The email then refers to what are said to be “instances of where I feel you have failed in your application of the bullying procedure”. In paragraph 1 Mr Bangert complained about the circumstances and nature of the meeting. In the following paragraphs he wrote:

2.

You attempted to coerce me to drop the grievance. You stated that if I went again that I could have my EPSRC funding withdrawn, and consequently that it would be in my own best interest to stop at stage 2.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘if you are not careful, if you go on in this you are going to have ... your funding withdrawn as well’

‘I will inform the EPSRC’

‘will you now please get on with your PhD studies which you are paid from EPSRC funds to do’

‘we are at stage 2 and it will stop at stage 2’

3.

You stated directly that I was wasting your time and the time of other members of staff with this issue.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘I am not wasting any more time on this’

‘Thomas, do you enjoy wasting people’s time ... you are the one who is wasting it’

4.

You stated that if I continued with this procedure that a number of other members of staff would be taking out grievances against me.

5.

You stated directly that you had reviewed the material and you had already made the decision, in advance of having the hearing. A hearing means that I must have the opportunity to make my case.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘I have already told you ... I do not find in your favour’

6.

A number of comments appear to be simply derogatory. In my view having no relevance to the issue at hand but intended to humiliate, intimidate, undermine or demean.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘you are a very very difficult person to get hold of ... you keep unreasonable hours, and in the future I will insist that you attend this university during more reasonable hours’

‘I got all of your email correspondence ... and if you keep sending vast quantities of email like that I think I might well at some stage ask that your email provision be withdrawn ... it has been not useful ... everyone is complaining about the long emails that you send’

‘you haven’t even written me a proper formal letter ... just a scruffy email with a signature on it ... so you haven’t formally requested a meeting’

‘I am not replying to any more emails ...’

7.

You insisted that you would apply the academic grievance procedure (1992), when in fact I had quite clearly and precisely specified in my grievance request of the 9.7.01 that I was invoking the “Policy and Procedure for Dealing with Complaints of Acts of Bullying”. You insisted repeatedly on this even after I informed you that I had been informed by HR that the procedure I had invoked was indeed the correct procedure in this case. You then called Luise Oppenberg (who had dealt with the issue) and proceeded to order her to change her view and to inform me that I had been wrongly informed, and to inform me of that fact. Luise did in fact acquiesce to this and I received a very odd and inconsistent note on the following day.

8.

You stated categorically on several occasions that I would no longer be employed by SBU. As the meeting was specifically on the grievance I had raised, I see no other explanation for raising this issue other than retaliation. You offered no explanation as to why I would no longer be employed other than in relation to the grievance. In fact you made the link between the grievance and your decision regarding my employment a number of times. This is particularly important as you are investigating the issue and retaliation is strictly prohibited by SBU’s own policies. It is also unlawful.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘you are not going to be offered any more work … that is over … that is finished’

‘I thought at first you might bring some fresh ideas … but your results have been just disastrous’

9.

You have in the course of the meeting portrayed me several times as a ‘troublemaker’; that this grievance was causing trouble for most if not all of the other members of staff. You went over a number of examples, each of which portrayed a harmonious working environment into which I had injected ‘trouble’.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘everyone you have worked with … there has been trouble’

‘this has gone on long enough … you are causing problems with everyone … everyone is complaining’

‘this business is causing everyone a great deal of trouble’

10.

You specifically stated that I have persistently and wrongly ignored the advice of a number of members of staff. You stated that as Course Director David Protheroe was well within his rights to give advice on the unit I taught and that Dave Protheroe was in your opinion correct in every piece of advice (to me, on the subject) that you had been presented with. You ignore, however, the proceeding of the meeting on this issue on the 10.11.00 which contradict what you stated in this meeting.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘You have consistently ignore the advice of everyone’

‘You have been advised by a number of people … and you have consistently ignored the advice on every occasion …’

‘Dave Protheroe is perfectly right to advise you in this way … he is the course director and a senior member of staff’

‘I have here a letter by Dave Protheroe … and he says exactly what everyone else has been saying about you … and I take the view that he is fully justified’

11.

You reviewed a complaint by Alan Howson. This complaint has no relevance to the grievance I brought forward. Furthermore, it is a complaint which I had not been made aware of in the past and to which I have not been given the opportunity to reply. You involve yourself personally in this by stating that you have acknowledged the fault and had written a memorandum to me in order to make me comply. I must point out that all of this is untrue. I did not refuse to provide the unit feedback. Alan Howson did request the feedback and it was provided within a day of his request. Furthermore, you did not write a ‘memorandum’ on this. You wrote a short handwritten note, which explained to me how, where and when to deliver the feedback to the external examiner.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘Alan Howson complained to me that you had refused to give him the feedback for the unit’

‘If I had not written the memorandum … I do not know if the feedback would have been delivered’

12.

You spent a considerable amount of time going through my entire record (employment and student) and consistently picking out every possible negative point. You presented a consistently negative evaluation of PhD research work.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘Network Protocol … how hard can it be to come up with a network protocol … this must be very common … thousands of people are doing it … its not suitable for PhD work …’

‘UCL? … you have had some dispute with UCL as well have you? … you see, we just can’t have that sort of thing’

13.

You presented a long review of my research work written by Ian Marshall, of BT Labs. You presented him as ‘Professor Marshall’ and you proceeded a very negative review written by him. As his review was quite long you picked out in detail a number of points he had made. Each of these points was extremely critical or negative. I fail to see what connection Ian Marshall has with my PhD work or why he was asked to review my work. I have no professional relation with Mr. Marshall nor is Mr. Marshall connected with my research work in any way. I looked up Mr. Marshall’s CV (freely available on his web site) and he is not an academic, he is not a ‘Professor’ (he does not even have a PhD). He does not have the qualification to act either as my supervisor or as an external examiner. As far as I know he is not an employee of SBU, or an employee of any other academic institution. He is certainly entitled to his own personal point of view (and indeed my work is freely available from my web server for anyone to read and criticize), but it is my view that it would be entirely improper to have Mr. Marshall have input into our PhD review process.

Some comments I recall which you made:

‘we have some feedback from Professor Ian Marshall who has had some involvement in the supervision of your PhD’ ”

It was agreed during the course of the hearing that it was not necessary to refer to the 25 July email, the contents of which had been incorporated into the 26 July email with additions.

Professor Bridge mentions the 23 July meeting in paragraph 18 of his July 27 memorandum (C6):

“In an email to me you have written an account of a meeting between you with which I totally disagree. This gives me first hand evidence about the way you distort what other staff have said to you in other meetings. In our last meeting I raised two matters separately. One concerned your conduct as a part-time teaching staff member, as documented above. The second matter was the progress in your research and for this part Professor Alford and Dr Pervez joined the meeting. Here, also as documented above the position is that it is very difficult for them, at present, to assess your research progress because of the totally insufficient information that you give them, especially on the transfer report. However the external reports mentioned above are extremely unpromising and there is a possibility that your work might, at best be recommended for writing up as an MPhil at best. If that were to be the case the EPSRC funding would terminate after two years.”

Ground 1, as developed by the claimant in the course of argument and taking into account my rejection of the grade fixing allegation, alleges that Dr Farwell failed, or failed properly, to take into account a relevant factor, namely that Professor Bridge may have been wrongly and dishonestly motivated in initiating, pursuing and promoting disciplinary proceedings against the claimant as a student, because the claimant had raised a grievance with the defendant in the email of 26 July “about the manner in which Professor Bridge had treated him, or failed to address, or to address properly, his complaints about the manner in which other members of the Department’s staff had treated him both as a colleague and as a student.” The ground refers to raising a grievance with the defendant because, Mr Hyams told me, the email was copied to the human resources department. I note that the email actually only referred to the possibility of a complaint being made.

The defendant, in my judgment, rightly submits that the complaints about the manner in which other members of the Department’s staff had treated him “as a colleague” to which much of the July 26 email refers were dealt with by Professor Clare and that Dr Farwell not only read his report but must have taken it into account. As Professor Clare’s report makes clear, that enquiry also turned into an investigation of Professor Bridge’s handling of the enquiry particularly in so far as the 18 August meeting is concerned. Professor Clare, as I have already said, concluded that Professor Bridge had conducted the enquiry thoroughly.

In any event would Professor Bridge have been so affected by the knowledge imparted to him in the July 26 email that the claimant might make a complaint about the manner in which, at the July 23 meeting, he had handled the claimant’s complaint against Dr Protheroe, that he would wrongly and dishonestly initiate etc disciplinary proceedings against the claimant? In my judgment the answer to that question is “No”. The claimant’s allegations were, in summary that Professor Bridge had said:

that the claimant was wasting his time and the time of other members of staff on the grievance against Dr Protheroe, (paragraph 3);

that if the claimant continued with the grievance procedure, then a number of other members of staff will be taking out grievances against him (paragraph 4);

that Professor Bridge had decided the issue in advance (paragraph 5);

that the claimant would no longer be employed by the University, (paragraph 8);

that the claimant had persistently and wrongly ignored the advice of a number of members of staff including David Protheroe (paragraph 10);

that there had been a reference to a complaint by Alan Howson (paragraph 11).

It is inconceivable that Professor Bridge would or may have acted in the way alleged because of the threat of action against him under the policy on bullying based on these alleged remarks.

As to the complaint about the Kate Viscardi complaint against the claimant, he was complaining about her conduct and that of David Protheroe rather than the conduct of Professor Bridge himself. That receives support from the way that this matter was dealt with in the July 26 email (see above).

It seems to me therefore that I am, at the most, only concerned with the manner in which Professor Bridge had allegedly treated the claimant, or failed to address, or to address properly, his complaints about the manner in which other members of the Department’s staff had treated him as a student. The complaints about the manner in which other members of the Department’s staff had treated him as a student which Professor Bridge had allegedly failed to address, or to address properly, could only be the complaints made by the claimant against Alan Nigrin/Dr Pervez (bullying) and the complaints relating to the supervision of his work. As to the former I do not believe that Professor Bridge had by July 27 received any complaint from the claimant asking the Professor to deal with the alleged bullying by Alan Nigrin or Dr Pervez (although this was not a matter on which I was addressed during the hearing by either party). Those complaints arrived with Professor Bridge on 11 October (see paragraphs 62 and 71).

That leaves only the allegation that Professor Bridge had failed to address, or to address properly, the complaints relating to the supervision of the claimant’s work. Although this is not specifically mentioned in the July 26 email, I am sure that Professor Bridge was aware that the claimant was complaining about the absence of what he regarded as proper supervisors/supervision for him at the meeting of 23 July and probably before (see paragraph 18 of the July 27 memorandum, paragraph 184 above). I do not see, however, any evidence that Professor Bridge would have thought that the claimant was complaining, or intending to complain, about any failure by Professor Bridge to address, or address properly, such complaints (although this was again not a matter on which I was addressed during the hearing by either party). That is supported by the opening paragraph of the July 26 email (C25) which refers to issues arising out of the segment of the meeting that dealt with the bullying complaint against Dr Protheroe, before, so it appears, Professor Alford and Dr Pervez joined the meeting.

It follows that all that is left of ground 1 is the allegation that Professor Bridge may have been wrongly and dishonestly motivated in initiating, pursuing and promoting disciplinary proceedings against the claimant as a student by the fact that the claimant had raised a grievance with the defendant in the email of 26 July about remarks which Professor Bridge had allegedly made at the 23 July meeting, remarks which the claimant was alleging constituted a possible breach of the University’s policy on bullying.

The principal material paragraphs in the 26 July email are 2 (although this relates in large measure to the Protheroe enquiry), 6, 9 and 12, coupled with the opening paragraph. I do not see how paragraph 13 could have been interpreted as bullying. It was a statement of fact on the material available to Professor Bridge.

Thus ground 1, in effect, reads:

Dr Farwell failed, or failed properly, to take into account a relevant factor, namely that Professor Bridge may have been wrongly and dishonestly motivated in initiating, pursuing and promoting disciplinary proceedings against the claimant as a student, because in the email of 26 July the claimant wrote that some of the “issues” “are sufficiently serious that they might lead to a” complaint of bullying being made by the claimant against Professor Bridge, the relevant “issues” being those principally contained in paragraphs 2, 6, 9 and 12, all of which relate to things allegedly said by Professor Bridge to the claimant at the 23 July meeting.”

To put it another way, having been threatened with the possibility that the claimant might bring a complaint against Professor Bridge under the University’s policy on bullying, Professor Bridge then may have initiated, pursued and promoted disciplinary proceedings against the claimant as a student wrongly and dishonestly.

Put in this simple way, the obvious weakness in the claimant’s case is apparent. The claimant was, in summary, alleging that Professor Bridge had:

attempted to coerce the claimant into dropping the grievance by stating that he could have his EPSRC funding withdrawn” (paragraph 2);

said “you are a very difficult person to get hold of … you keep unreasonable hours, and in the future I will insist that you attend the University during more reasonable hours” and had complained about the length of the claimant’s email correspondence (paragraph 6);

said that the claimant was a troublemaker (paragraph 9);

given a consistently negative evaluation of the claimant’s PhD research work (paragraph 12).

It seems to me to be inconceivable that Professor Bridge would or may have acted in the way alleged because of the threat of action against him under the policy on bullying based on these alleged remarks. It is inconceivable that Dr Farwell (or anyone investigating the matter) would conclude on the material available to her that Professor Bridge had or may have made the threat set out in paragraph 2. It will be remembered what he himself had said in the July 27 memorandum (although this could not be decisive) :

“In an email to me you have written an account of a meeting between you with which I totally disagree. This gives me first hand evidence about the way you distort what other staff have said to you in other meetings.”

As to the other alleged remarks they were true or Professor Bridge had good reason to believe that they were true. Furthermore it is difficult to see how they could constitute bullying except in the mind of the claimant. As in the case of Dr Protheroe, the claimant confuses criticism and comment with bullying.

Mr Hyams submits that Professor Bridge may have been motivated by malice and puts forward a number of matters which, he says, supports that submission.

Following paragraph 8 of the skeleton argument, there is the following heading:

“Facts which indicate that Professor Bridge’s motivation was inappropriate and which show that a failure to investigate the allegations by the claimant of bad faith was either unfair or irrational.”

Under this heading the claimant sets out a number of the allegations contained in the 27 July 2001 memorandum and then sets out to show that the allegations were false. The falsity, it is said, shows that Professor Bridge’s motivation was inappropriate. They also show, it is said, that a failure to investigate the allegations being made by the claimant against Professor Bridge was either unfair or irrational.

In so far as the “allegation of non-co-operation with his supervisors” is concerned (paragraphs 9-12 of the skeleton argument), it seems to me be unsustainable in the light of the findings made by Dr Farwell. It is not submitted that the individual findings are themselves irrational but that the instigator of the complaints, Professor Bridge, was motivated by malice.

 The second alleged fact under this heading is “Professor Bridge’s rejection of email as a written communication”. I have set out Professor Bridge’s 19 July reply, which shows irritation after a week away on holiday, not malice.

The third is “allegation of breach of email protocol.” In the skeleton argument it was submitted that there was no document setting out an email protocol. In fact the claimant accepted that there was such an email code (D22). The code required messages to be concise. The claimant’s emails were not concise. Dr Farwell decided not to investigate the matter, stating that length and volume are a matter of opinion (claimant’s bundle, 326 at paragraph 5.2). There is nothing in my view to support the allegation that because Professor Bridge complained about the claimant’s use of email, he was motivated by malice.

The fourth and fifth alleged facts which demonstrate malice relate to the issue of supervision. Given the findings relating to allegation 3, this has no merit.

The sixth alleged fact showing malice is paragraph 5 of his memorandum (see paragraph 25 of this judgment). As to the issue of whether the claimant had the consent of his supervisors, I have examined that already in some detail. The document which suggests that he had the authority of Dr Pervez (paragraph 92 above) was sent by Professor Bridge to Dr Farwell- hardly consistent with malice. As to the second sentence of paragraph 5, there was evidence of that from Alan Nigrin (see paragraph 68 of this judgment) upon which Professor Bridge was entitled to rely. Although I have assumed that Dr Farwell did not see C115A, a email dated 4 July complaining strongly about the claimant’s behaviour, Professor Bridge did have a copy (C115). It supports the conclusion that Professor Bridge had material upon which he was entitled to rely to make this allegation and disproves malice.

Finally it is suggested that the fact (which I have assumed) that Professor Bridge brought the website contents to the notice of Dr Farwell demonstrates malice. It does not and could not do so in the light of Dr Farwell’s conclusions.

 Mr Hamilton invites me when considering the issue of malice to look at the history of the relationship of the claimant to those members of the University’s staff with whom he had such acrimonious dealings and to conclude that the memorandum of July 27 is no more than the culmination of problems which had lasted many months and its contents do not demonstrate malice. I agree. Nor is there any merit in the “digging the dirt” allegation. Professor Bridge was doing that which he was entitled to do and obtain evidence to support the allegations. It is said that he disregarded evidence which helped the claimant. Professor Bridge did however forward the report from Dr Pervez which undermined, or could have undermined, allegation 1. In any event the claimant had ample opportunity to present any evidence which helped him.

Not only has the claimant failed to show that Professor Bridge was or may have been activated by malice, there is nothing to suggest that the findings of Dr Farwell would have been any different if Professor Bridge had in fact been activated by malice. Allegation 3 did not depend on the evidence from Professor Bridge but on the evidence of those other members of staff who were trying unsuccessfully to help the claimant in his research project. The website allegations proved themselves. Indeed the claimant said to Dr Farwell on 5 October, referring to the charges against him in the July 27 memorandum: “.. these are not Prof. Bridge’s allegations, they are allegations submitted by other members of staff which he has collated” (D15, right hand column).

The defendant submits that Dr Farwell must have taken into account the fact that Professor Bridge may have been wrongly motivated and rejected it, although he accepts that she does not say so or give her reasons for so doing. He invited me to read the statement of Dr Farwell. Mr Hyams submitted that I should adopt the approach, to use his words, “pithily summed up by the Court of Appeal in S. v. Brent London Borough Council [2002] EWCA Civ 693 at para. 26” (see supplementary skeleton argument paragraph 2). I have decided that it is not necessary for me to consider the contents of the statement, save in so far as it identifies which documents were before her. Whether she gave consideration to the issue raised by ground 1 or not, there was only one rational conclusion, namely that it is inconceivable on the evidence that Professor Bridge would or may have acted in the way alleged because of the threat of action against him contained in the emails sent by the claimant.

Mr Hamilton submitted that there were a number of reasons why Dr Farwell would have been entitled not to treat the claimant as a credible witness, for example his evidence about his supervisors and about Ian Marshall, about the EPSRC and his claim about the reasons why he was employed as a lecturer. Whilst seeing force in this argument, Dr Farwell’s findings were not based on an adverse credibility finding, although some of her conclusions necessarily cast doubt on the credibility of the claimant (see e.g. the conclusion about Professor Marshall (claimant’s bundle 327).

My conclusions on ground 1 make it unnecessary for me to deal specifically with ground 2.

For all these reasons I dismiss the application. I should add that there was, in my view, overwhelming evidence against the claimant on the very important allegation 3 and on the website allegations. That, in itself, is dispositive of this claim. I note, in the claimant’s favour, that Dr Farwell in her statement (paragraph 51 B27) states that her view the website allegations alone would probably not have resulted in the claimant’s exclusion. Although my analysis of allegation 1 (and perhaps allegation 2) shows some doubts about the conclusions of Dr Farwell- for which the claimant bears at least some responsibility- the finding on allegation 3 would inevitably have led to the decision to terminate the claimant’s studentship and exclude him from the University.

In my judgment the claim should never have been brought. It has unnecessarily wasted the time and money of the defendant and its staff, time and money which is in short supply and which could have been used to a better purpose than fighting these proceedings and the claimant’s unsuccessful proceedings in the Employment Tribunal.