The Court of Appeal has dismissed Olumide Smith’s appeal against a High Court decision upholding the Labour Court’s rejection of his employment discrimination complaints against Cisco Systems Internetworking (Ireland) Limited.
Smith, formerly a software engineer at the company, was dismissed on 2 July 2013 after a disciplinary inquiry. He complained to the equality authorities in November 2013, alleging race discrimination in pay, promotion and his dismissal, as well as victimisation. The Labour Court rejected the complaints in April 2018. The High Court dismissed Smith’s appeal on a point of law in November 2020.
In a judgment delivered on 21 January 2025, Mr Justice Binchy said the Court of Appeal’s task was to consider whether the High Court had erred in law. It was not a fresh hearing of the underlying dispute. The court found that Smith had not identified an error of law in the High Court’s decision.
The Labour Court had refused Smith’s request to extend the six-month period for bringing his complaint. He argued that the company’s delayed response to a data access request had prevented him from filing sooner. The Court of Appeal said he had not identified documents that were necessary to make his complaint, and noted that he filed it before receiving all the requested data. It upheld the conclusion that he had not shown the required connection between the delay and the reason relied on for an extension.
The court also upheld the approach that earlier alleged acts could be considered as part of a continuing pattern only if a relevant act of discrimination occurred within the time limit. The Labour Court had found no such act in the period it could consider.
On dismissal, the Labour Court had found that Smith offered no more than assertion linking the disciplinary process to his race. The Court of Appeal said that even assuming procedural deficiencies, Smith had not established facts connecting them to race or showing that an employee of a different racial origin would have been treated more favourably. It also found no evidence that he was overlooked for promotion during the relevant period. On pay, the Labour Court found the proposed comparators were paid less than Smith; the Court of Appeal said that factual finding could not be revisited on this appeal absent a clear basis to find it unreasonable.
The appeal court also rejected arguments about retrospective application of the Workplace Relations Act 2015 and dismissed Smith’s challenge concerning a document said to state that he did not “fit into the Cisco culture”. The court had not been provided with the document, and the judgment said its context and treatment in the earlier proceedings were unclear.
The court refused Smith’s request to refer 33 questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union, finding they did not raise issues of European law interpretation or transposition. All grounds of appeal were dismissed. The court gave its preliminary view that Cisco was entitled to its costs, while allowing Smith 14 days to make written submissions on a different costs order.