Years of appeals later, this ex-employee is footing the Club's legal bill
On 14 August 2026, Mr Justice Coleman rejected a dismissed golf club worker's repeated appeals in a disability discrimination case, ordering indemnity costs.
The claimant, a former Assistant Chief Marshal and Bag Drop attendant, had worked at the Club since September 2015. Around April 2016 he began experiencing pain in his left shoulder, unconnected to his job. On 23 September 2016 the Club gave him one month's notice, with his employment ending the following day.
The claimant brought a claim under Hong Kong's Disability Discrimination Ordinance, alleging his dismissal was linked to his shoulder condition and related sick leave, in breach of sections 6(a) and 11(2)(c) of the Ordinance. He sought monetary relief and reinstatement. The Club's case was that the termination was solely due to unsatisfactory performance and attitude, unconnected to the disability.
Judge Jonathan Wong of the District Court dismissed the claim on 20 April 2023, finding the claimant had failed to prove, on a balance of probabilities, that his termination was connected to the disability, whether the comparator approach or the alternative "why" approach was applied. The claimant was ordered to pay the Club's costs on an indemnity basis, and a later ruling on his applications to vary that order found his claim had been frivolous, bound to fail, and brought maliciously.
Over the next three years, the claimant filed four separate summonses seeking to admit new evidence, an application to re-re-amend his grounds of appeal, a bid to appeal the costs decision, and a renewed application for leave to appeal the original dismissal. The Court of Appeal found the material in each summons either irrelevant to the appeal or unable to meet the legal test for admitting fresh evidence, including a complaint against the Club's counsel and a subpoena dispute the claimant had earlier abandoned.
On the substantive application, the claimant raised five grounds: error of law, error of fact, procedural irregularity over rejected subpoenas, bias, and an allegation that the Judge had copied the Club's submissions. The bias ground centred on a remark by Judge Wong that despite the claimant having been labelled a vexatious litigant in other proceedings, he had "focused on the evidence as adduced in the present case" in reaching his decision. The Court of Appeal, in the judgment given by Mr Justice Coleman with Mr Justice Anthony Chan sitting alongside, found no palpable error in any ground and noted the claimant was largely repeating arguments already rejected at trial.
The court also recalled an earlier ruling in the same litigation, in which the claimant's bid to challenge related subpoena decisions was rejected on the basis that "the claimant's intended appeal lacked merits and would have no reasonable prospect of success".
Both the renewed leave application and the separate appeal over the costs decision, which the claimant had already sought to withdraw, were dismissed. The Court of Appeal ordered the claimant to pay the Club's costs of both applications on an indemnity basis, to be assessed summarily, and barred any request to reconsider the ruling at an oral hearing.
In dismissing every application, the Court of Appeal held that none of the five grounds disclosed a palpable error in the trial judge's findings, and ordered the claimant to bear the Club's costs of both the renewed leave application and the separate costs appeal on an indemnity basis.
