Catherine Baksi | Jonathan Ames, Legal Editor
Thursday February 02 2023, 6.00pm GMT, The Times
Judge Kalyani Kaul KC sued the Ministry of Justice, the lord chancellor and the lord chief justice.
The Ministry of Justice and the judiciary are to pay £50,000 in compensation over a claim of judicial bullying and negligence that included an alleged physical assault.
Ministry of Justice officials offered to settle the claim within the past few weeks, a month before a senior crown court judge’s case was to be heard at the High Court.
The Ministry of Justice has confirmed to The Times that no liability was accepted.
The deal agreed by Dominic Raab, the justice minister, and Lord Burnett of Maldon, the lord chief justice, comes amid growing concern over bullying by senior judges.
Senior members of the judiciary have attempted to address the problem and published a “statement of expected behaviour” last month. The guidance told judges that they should treat everyone “fairly and respectfully”.
Last year The Times revealed the existence of a secret report commissioned by the senior judiciary that found widespread allegations of bullying and racism by judges.
Stuart Fegan, a GMB union official, which has a judges’ division, wrote to Burnett last week to express concerns over a “toxic work environment within the judicial system”.
Fegan said that judges had reported bullying and harassment by their colleagues, with a “significant number” feeling suicidal because of their treatment at work. The union official said that initiatives purporting to address the problems and promote wellbeing were “at best tokenistic”.
In the case that has just settled, Judge Kalyani Kaul KC sued the Ministry of Justice, the lord chancellor and the lord chief justice over claims that she was bullied and mistreated by senior members of the judiciary. Kaul claimed that their behaviour caused her to suffer depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.
She claimed that senior judges, including Lord Justice Rabinder Singh KC, who is now in the Court of Appeal, failed to support her and that others bullied her after she raised complaints about “disrespectful, discourteous, unprofessional, and rude” barristers appearing before her in a lengthy trial in 2015 at Snaresbrook crown court in east London.
Two defence barristers were found to have behaved in a rude and unprofessional manner in complaints heard at disciplinary tribunals.
Jacqueline Vallejo, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers in London, was suspended for four months and fined £2,000 by the tribunal, which found that she had been “belligerent, directly to the court” and that her behaviour created a “toxic atmosphere in court”.
Marguerite Russell from the same chambers was fined £1,000 for calling the judge “insane”, pulling faces at her during a trial and describing her rulings as “ridiculous”.
Kaul also alleged that she was physically assaulted by Judge David Radford, who was the resident judge at Snaresbrook crown court and effectively her line manager.
Kaul claimed that he grabbed her arm and “dragged her across a corridor, digging his fingers into her arm where they remained, causing redness and tenderness”.
Judge Kaul’s case was that the justice ministry, the lord chancellor and the lord chief justice owed a duty of care to provide a safe place of work and that they were vicariously liable for the acts of other judges and court staff towards her.
The defendants denied her allegations but last year in a landmark concession, they accepted that ministers and senior judges owe a duty of care to judges.
Kaul, 62, was called to the bar in 1983 and became a Queen’s Counsel, now King’s Counsel, in 2011. She became a part-time judge in 2009 and was appointed a circuit judge in 2015.
She sits at Wood Green crown court. She is a tutor judge for the Judicial College, was appointed a diversity community judge in 2019 and launched the Judicial Support Network in 2021.