Deaf News: Judge reserves judgment on Little Mix case as claimant team lays out final arguments

The judge overseeing a case concerning the lack of British Sign Language (BSL) access at a Little Mix concert in 2017 has reserved judgment, after telling counsel that they won’t hear anything from him for “at least a month”.

In the latest session in the proceedings, held on Thursday, District Judge Avent said he would “be in touch” with Ms Casserley, who represents the three Deaf parents in the claim.

The claim itself was brought by Sally Reynolds, Sarah Cassandro and Victoria Nelson, who attended a concert at the South of England Event Centre in Sussex, but a BSL interpreter was not provided for the two support acts.

The defendant in the case, LHG Live Limited, had offered Sally carer tickets in order for her to bring her own interpreter, but this was turned down in favour of the promotor providing it instead.

In her final submission, Ms Casserley touched upon the arguments made by LHG for not providing an interpreter, in that there are “limited interpreters” and that “Performance Interpreting were charging too much”.

“[It wasn’t that there] wasn’t the interpreter available; the issue was that insufficient notice was provided,” she said, adding that with regards to the cost argument, LHG Live Limited could have sought other options.

Ms Casserley would later go on to say that the cost for the interpreter “could have been reflected in the ticket pricing”, and that there was “no figure provided” for the takings from the concert in question, or collective performances.

After the defendant claimed that the three parents “were only concerned with Little Mix”, Ms Casserley argued that “the service being provided was the entire show”.

Promotions “referred to the Little Mix concert, not necessarily the specific performance”, she said.

“[It’s about] the service as a whole. To separate it in that way […] is untenable. It is the entirety,” the barrister continued.

Ms Casserley also argued that the adjustments provided by LHG Live Limited did not allow the claimants to have an experience “enjoyed by the rest of the public”, and that the carer tickets were for them to “bring their own Interpreters” – essentially “requiring the claimants to pay for their own adjustments”.

This is not allowed, with the Equality and Human Rights Commission stating in its guidance that disabled people asking for an adjustment “must not be asked to pay for it”.

The case itself concerns the Equality Act 2010 and its duty for service providers to make “reasonable adjustments” for disabled people (Section 20) – which the claimants contend was breached by LHG Live Limited, along with Section 21 (failure to comply with the duty).

Ms Casserley added that there was also a breach of the “indirect discrimination provisions” listed under the Act, but that there would be “no claim for injunctive relief” given the defendant’s circumstances.

LHG Live Limited, the name of the company at the time of the issue, later changed its name to Live in the UK Limited before going into liquidation last year, with a voluntary liquidator appointed in August 2020.

More than £10,000 has been raised for the case online, on the crowdfunding website Crowdjustice, with the money helping to meet the initial £100,000 in legal fees from LHG Live Limited if they lost in court.

In her argument for the awarding of aggravated damages “on the basis of the conduct of the defendant”, Ms Casserley said that the three claimants were “intimidated” by the sum, adding that it would have to be “some discrimination claim” for the fee to be justified.

She went on to criticise individuals “using the [Civil Procedure Rules] in an inappropriate manner simply to […] dissuade claimants from pursuing claims based on their fundamental human rights”.

Although the three parents are also seeking a declaration of discrimination from the judge, Ms Casserley confirmed that the claimants don’t see this case as “setting a precedent”.

Thursday’s proceedings, which lasted almost two hours, followed a hearing last Friday, which was forced to adjourn after two interpreters withdrew their services.

The move came after comments about the accuracy of their interpreting were posted in the chat box function, and on social media the day before.

The latest hearing saw two new interpreters provided, along with live captions provided by a speech-to-text reporter. The video call, now on Microsoft Teams, also had the chat function disabled.

DJ Avent said the decision was made “so we do not, effectively, have chatter from the public gallery as to what’s going on”.

As the proceedings concluded, the judge said he liked to “cross the t’s and dot the i’s”, confirming that his judgment would be issued – and handed down – at a later date.

A full thread of live-tweets from the hearing, from The Limping Chicken‘s Liam O’Dell, can be found on his Twitter account.

Photo: vagueonthehow/Flickr.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.