John Hatton
Partner
Experience
John is a Partner in the Employment & Pensions Division based in Birmingham.
John leads a team of employment lawyers undertaking work across all the firm’s sectors. John’s practice is primarily focused in the West Midlands, North West and South West of England. He represents clients across a broad range of contentious and non-contentious employment issues and regularly manages a caseload of complex Tribunal litigation including cases relating to discrimination, whistleblowing wrongful and unfair dismissals and wages claims. John is regularly instructed on multi-week discrimination and whistleblowing claims involving numerous witnesses and sensitive issues with the potential to impact an organisation’s reputation.
John also regularly undertakes advisory work including managing doctors under MHPS and complex grievance disputes.
Expertise
John has specific expertise and a passion for working with the healthcare sector. Having undertaken his training contract for the in-house legal department of NHS Wales, John is able to provide sector specific employment law advice with a strong contextual understanding of how that advice engages with the modern day NHS and sits alongside other legal practice areas such as clinical negligence, procurement and clinical advisory.
Notable Projects
- Successfully advising and representing an NHS Trust and 12 named Respondents in respect of two sexual harassment, sex discrimination and victimisation claims involving in excess of 40 witnesses combined. The Trust achieved a successful dismissal of all claims in respect of the first claim after a four week final hearing and the second claim was struck out against the NHS Trust and all named Respondents on the second day of another four week final hearing;
- Advising and representing an NHS Trust in respect of a race discrimination, victimisation and constructive dismissal claim brought by an Associate Specialist doctor and successfully achieving a withdrawal of all claims following a Preliminary Hearing where the Claimant’s application to amend his claims was rejected;
- Advising an NHS Trust on whether the condition of “Electromagnetic Sensitivity” would meet the definition of disability in s.6 Equality Act 2010 and successfully challenging that this condition amounted to a disability during the material time of the claim.
- Advising an Integrated Care System (ICS) on the creation of a Reservist workforce to be deployed across the ICS during periods of high demand; and drafting the agreements and fixed-term contracts to support the project.
- Successfully defending injunctive proceedings brought by a Consultant Oncologist who was seeking to lift his exclusion from the Trust. The application was made during an ongoing MHPS process which was investigating concerns that he had inappropriately billed NHS patients for their treatment and successfully obtaining an award for a significant portion of the Trust’s legal fees
CSR
John has been recognised in the 2024 Pro Bono Recognition list for his volunteer work with the Central England Law Centre providing advice on employment law issues to members of the public who would otherwise be without legal assistance.
Admitted as a Solicitor
- 2017
Memberships
- Employment Lawyers Association
Qualifications
- BA Law – University of Sheffield 2011
- BPTC – Northumbria University 2012
- LPC – University of South Wales 2017
