Journalists should be provided with access to documents from employment tribunal cases even in the aftermath of a judgment, it has been ruled, after a successful legal challenge by the Guardian.
In a significant victory for open justice, the employment appeal tribunal threw out a ruling from a lower court that the costs of transparency would be too burdensome, and instead ordered that the Guardian should be provided with documents it had requested.
The judge suggested the documents should be released at no cost.
The ruling builds on a series of recent judgments enhancing the rights of journalists to access documents placed before the court, particularly where they demonstrate that they are acting in the public interest.
“The press have an important role in reporting the judgments of courts and tribunals,” the judge, James Tayler, ruled. “It is in the public interest that they have the necessary information to be able to do so fairly and accurately.”
The case relates to an application by the Guardian journalist David Pegg, in 2018, for documents referred to in the public judgment of an employment tribunal case.
The case involved Dmitri Rozanov, an employee of the London branch of EFG, a Swiss bank, which he claimed had unfairly sacked him. Rozanov argued he was sacked after raising concerns about EFG’s compliance with anti-money-laundering practices and its facilitation of a $100m transaction for a client allegedly connected to the Chechen despot Ramzan Kadyrov.
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