Exclusive reporting and opinion by Mathew Carr

Oct. 30, 2024 — Justice Sarah Crowther threw out my attempt to get extra time to appeal against a £10,000 cost order for daring to sue Bloomberg LP.

Judge Crowther of the Employment Appeal Tribunal said late yesterday at the Rolls Building in central London that she was a little troubled by my “difficult” case, but she then went ahead and denied me the chance to fight the outrageous £10,000 order. (Parties generally pay their own costs in British employment courts)

She rejected my arguments that my case was “exceptional” and that I deserved leniency. I argued I deserved that leniency because injustice was swirling in my mind as I missent an email and missed a deadline by two minutes … because (in part):

–there was an eight-month delay before written reasons of an earlier EAT decision were sent to parties; (I was being effectively sanctioned for missing a deadline by 2 minutes) I hadn’t seen the written reasons at the time of the deadline.

–the cost hearing was labelled as “preliminary” when it was “final”, prejudicing my case.

–Bloomberg pretended my sacking in May 2020 was about lack of competence, yet there was a surge in the number of my stories that appeared on the “top worldwide” screen — Bloomberg’s front page; if I was such a bad reporter as needing to be fired, why was I trusted to break and write so much front-page news — almost one per working day? (Bloomberg employs about 2,700 journalists globally.) I had for years earlier complained of the firm’s bad climate news that effectively slowed action to cut emissions.

–Bloomberg’s own data showed I was performing better than most of the anonymous employees picked by the Respondent; yet this was almost completely ignored by the courts (judging from the judgements); I’m not saying I’m anywhere near perfect.

–The timings of many of the detriments coming immediately after my climate disclosures while at Bloomberg News demonstrated the reasonableness of my case, yet these 18 plus detriments were repeatedly ignored by the tribunals.

–There was a failure to disclose key documents that would have worked to erode its “false case” against me. Yes, Bloomberg orchestrated an elaborate cover up that tricked the various tribunals. Or … the tribunals were always were going to find against me because they are there to protect rich American companies that employ many Britons.

–Bloomberg claimed the people firing me (Emma Ross-Thomas, Will Kennedy, Stuart Wallace, Reed Landberg) didn’t know about my whistleblowing, yet I’d almost a year before used Bloomberg’s whistleblower service run by outside supplier Navex. Bloomberg renamed my whistleblowing a “grievance” to dodge the whistleblowing laws and begin about six years of lawfare.

Judge Crowther Kings Counsel (above pic from Outer Temple website) apparently ignored my submissions that the legal process abused my human rights and denied my rights to access justice. See press release below:

Press Release

Climate whistleblower’s human rights ‘abused by Bloomberg LP and UK judiciary’ (4)

Point of law:

In her earlier decision, the registrar’s representative Ms Lewenstein said: “To conclude, I do not accept the Appellant’s explanation for the default to be a good excuse and I do not consider this to be a rare and exceptional case in which the strict laws on time limits should be relaxed. I decide not to exercise my discretion under rules of the court. The application to extend time is refused.“

Crowther agreed.

Again: my argument was that this case is clearly exceptional and discretion should have been exercised. That’s because of the multiple injustices, incorrect statements/mistruths from Bloomberg LP and the Tribunals and the EAT.

The Whistleblowing

Exclusive: 39 pages of whistleblowing at Bloomberg News 2016-2019 deemed by UK judiciary as not specific enough