JUDGES’ decisions are often reported in the media. But the rule is that they must never be the story. For Judge Kalyani Kaul KC that was not possible. The former criminal barrister sued the Ministry of Justice [MoJ], the lord chancellor and the lord chief justice because she said she was bullied and mistreated by senior members of the judiciary. In the end, in February, the MOJ offered Kaul £50,000 to settle the case.
“Kaly was ready to take her bosses on,” one source told the GG2 Power List. “But she felt after years of disputes and harassment by the judiciary, she was ready to settle. The whole case has left her shattered and depressed. They wanted to shut her down, and they failed. They wanted her to go away, and they failed. They wanted her not to be seen as standard bearer for those judges who claim that misogyny, bullying and racism are rife in the judiciary, and they failed.”
Kaul’s claim was that senior judges failed to support her when others bullied her after she raised complaints about “disrespectful, discourteous, unprofessional, and rude” barristers who appeared before her in 2015 trial in 2015 at Snaresbrook crown court in east London. Disciplinary tribunals found that two defence barristers behaved in a rude and unprofessional manner. The hearing suspended Jacqueline Vallejo, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers in London, for four months and fined her £2,000. It concluded that she had been “belligerent, directly to the court”. Her behaviour, it said, created a “toxic atmosphere in court”. The tribunal fined Marguerite Russell from the same chambers £1,000 after she called Kaul “insane”. It heard that Russell pulled faces at the judge during a trial and described her rulings as “ridiculous”.
Court papers seen by the Power List alleged that a senior justice grabbed Judge Kaul’s “arm and dragged her across a corridor, digging his fingers into her arm where they remained, causing redness and tenderness”. As part of her case the MoJ clarified that it had a duty of care to judges.
“Kaly’s been awfully brave,” said another unnamed justice. “This happened in 2015, and up until 2020, Kaly tried desperately hard to get the judiciary to listen that she was being bullied. She tried to work with the system to change procedures and urged them to bring in an anti-bullying code of conduct. All that fell on deaf ears.”
Sources have told the Power List that Kaul realised that she was not alone, and in March 2021, along with whistleblowing former judge, Claire Gilham, she set up the Justice Support Network [JSN]. At the time, Kaul told our sister publication Eastern Eye, “Being a judge is actually quite an isolated job. On the one hand, the judiciary is collegiate, but there are challenges there which face us. We just want to be a friendly ear for people to help them, to make the judiciary a strong and independent profession as it should be.” The Power List has learnt that since then, the JSN has heard of almost 230 complaints of unfair treatment or misconduct by judicial office holders to judges. It has also worked to change policy on whistleblowing, health, welfare and duty of care to judges.
“We have probably been disruptors and we’re seen as thorns in the side of the judiciary,” said one judge who is a member of the JSN. “We have raised issues which are then adopted by the judiciary. The GMB [union] is probably the biggest thing we've done. On 31st January, the GMB formally opened a judicial division. That means for the first time, judges have a very large organisation, which is completely independent of the judiciary and the MoJ to raise their concerns, and that's, that's hugely important. We needed much more clout, more power than we could ever exercise, and Kaly and we did that.”
Kaul continues to fight the judiciary. At the time of writing, she was waiting for an employment appeal tribunal judge to decide whether a previous hearing in 2021 was wrong to strike out her grievance claims against the MoJ, lord chancellor and lord chief justice.
