A chambers which unlawfully victimised a barrister for standing up to Stonewall has been ordered to pay her £20,000 in costs for “unreasonable conduct”.
Allison Bailey was placed under investigation by Garden Court Chambers for challenging the campaign group’s “trans extremism”, leading an employment tribunal to rule last year that the 53-year-old criminal defence specialist had been discriminated against at work for her gender-critical beliefs.
Now, an employment tribunal has made the unusual decision of awarding a substantial sum in costs to Ms Bailey for the way Garden Court and its legal team conducted itself during the acrimonious litigation.
£20,000 is thought to be the highest costs sum a tribunal can award against a party without having to launch a parallel litigation to argue over the precise amount, which would run up further legal fees.
Ms Bailey has already been awarded £22,000 from Garden Court in compensation for injury to her feelings.
The lawyer and gender-critical activist ran up costs of £765,665 for the litigation last year – she has relied heavily on a public fundraising campaign to fund the court action – while Garden Court spent £675,673.
Source: Gender-critical barrister wins top payout as judge issues stinging criticism of chambers