On 3 March 2026, the Employment Appeal Tribunal granted a restriction of proceedings order against Ms Sandra Messi under section 33 of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 (Attorney General v Messi [2026] EAT 34). She had brought over 50 employment tribunal claims since 2017 — 13 in 2024 alone. Not one succeeded. Not one settled. The order prevents her from instituting or continuing any ET proceedings without first obtaining the EAT's permission.
Messi is a useful prompt to survey the three mechanisms that now exist to restrain vexatious litigants in the employment tribunal system — because many practitioners are only dimly aware that any of them exist.
The Restriction of Proceedings Order (S.33 ETA 1996)
The Attorney General (or Lord Advocate in Scotland) may apply to the EAT where a person has "habitually and persistently and without any reasonable ground" instituted vexatious proceedings. The hallmarks were defined by Lord Bingham CJ in Attorney General v Barker [2000] 1 FLR 759: proceedings with little or no basis in law, whose effect is to subject the defendant to inconvenience and expense out of all proportion to any likely gain, involving an abuse of process. An RPO requires the EAT's leave before any new proceedings can be instituted. Leave is only granted under section 33(4) where the proceedings are not an abuse and disclose reasonable grounds.
The Civil Proceedings Order (S.42 SCA 1981)
A CPO is broader. It can restrict proceedings across courts and tribunals — and a claim brought in breach of a CPO is a nullity, not merely susceptible to being struck out, but void ab initio. That was established in HM Attorney General v Edwards [2015] EWHC 1653 (Admin) and confirmed by the Court of Appeal in Williamson v Bishop of London and ors [2023] ICR 1004. The CPO also has wider personal scope: section 42(1A) covers proceedings instituted "by him or another" — meaning it can restrict a litigant from acting as a representative in someone else's proceedings too.
The Civil Restraint Order (CPR 3.11 / PD 3C)
The High Court's inherent jurisdiction to make a CRO extending to employment tribunal proceedings was confirmed in Nursing and Midwifery Council v Harrold [2016] IRLR 30. A general CRO requires at least three claims or applications certified as "totally without merit." The most common form used against persistent ET litigants is the GCRO — as in Harrold (No.2) [2016] IRLR 497 and London Underground Ltd v Mighton [2020] EWHC 3099 (QB) — which lasts for up to two years (renewable) and prevents the litigant from issuing any proceedings in any court or tribunal without judicial permission.
The Representative Gap
One notable feature of the Messi decision is what the EAT declined to do. The Attorney General had sought an order preventing Ms Messi from acting as a representative or McKenzie friend for other litigants. The EAT held it had no jurisdiction to make such an order under section 33: unlike section 42 of the Senior Courts Act, which covers proceedings "by him or another," section 33 is limited to proceedings instituted by the person named in the order. Respondents facing a vexatious litigant who doubles as an unqualified representative will need a CPO, not an RPO, to address that problem.
None of these orders bars access to the tribunal entirely. Each operates as a permission filter — a judicial gateway that allows meritorious claims through while catching the rest. The practical difficulty has always been that respondents and their advisers are slow to seek them, and the Attorney General slower still. For any practitioner dealing with a serial claimant who treats the tribunal system as a grievance mechanism rather than a forum for the resolution of genuine disputes, Messi is a reminder that the mechanisms exist — and that, when properly invoked, they work.