The team was led by Colin Leckey (Partner), supported by Anna Bond (Partner) and a team from across the firm's employment practice.

The costs judgment orders the claimant, Jacopo Moretti, to pay 70% of the respondents' costs of £2.3m, subject to detailed assessment.

The order follows Lewis Silkin's success at the five-week liability trial at an Employment Tribunal in October 2025, at which the tribunal dismissed all of Mr Moretti's claims of discrimination, victimisation, harassment, whistleblowing dismissal and detriment.

The tribunal found that Mr Moretti's dismissal had been for the fair reason of capability and not for any discriminatory or retaliatory reason. His conduct in covertly recording over 70 hours of conversations with colleagues was described as "egregious" and his evidence was found on multiple occasions to be "disingenuous". The only finding in Mr Moretti's favour was that his dismissal had been procedurally unfair, for which he received a basic award of £1,286, having sought over £100m.

The tribunal's costs judgment is notable not only for its scale but for the strength of its findings on the claimant's conduct. The tribunal concluded that it should have been obvious that the claims had little reasonable prospect of success, and that they had been pursued with an "ulterior motive" of "maximising costs and reputational embarrassment to the Respondents." The tribunal further found that Mr Moretti had "systematically, and sometimes cynically, engineered" covert recordings of conversations "with an ulterior motivation to extract potentially beneficial material for contemplated litigation," describing this as "a significant abuse of trust." The tribunal was satisfied that throughout the proceedings, the claimant had adopted an approach designed to cause "maximum disruption, cost and potential reputational damage to the Respondents."

Colin Leckey commented:

We’re extremely pleased to have secured this outcome for our client. The tribunal's findings on the claimant's conduct speak for themselves, and the scale of the costs order underlines the importance of employers being willing to defend claims robustly, even where large sums are at stake.

With the removal of the compensation cap for unfair dismissal on the horizon, the tribunal will increasingly be a forum for high-value disputes, and this judgment is a helpful reminder that costs recovery remains a real prospect where claims lack merit.

Colin Leckey instructed Davide Reade KC and Georgina Leadbetter of Littleton Chambers.