Manivannan v Tata Consultancy Services Limited [2025] FedCFamC2G 834

1. The dispute between the parties has a long history of which they are both well aware. For some time now Mr Manivannan has been prosecuting claims against the respondent (TCS) associated with his Australia-based employment with it. He commenced that proceeding in 2022 and has now in 2025 commenced two further proceedings dealing with issues concerning his employment relationship with TCS that are not presently in issue in the first proceeding.
2. The matter is before the Court today on TCS's application to dismiss the two proceedings that Mr Manivannan has commenced this year, the second and third proceedings.
3. There appears to be no contest between the parties on the historical facts of the litigation and a useful summary of relevant pleadings has been set out in the table annexed to TCS's written submissions dated 28 March 2025.
4. The unavoidable conclusion to be drawn is that, in the two new proceedings, Mr Manivannan seeks to raise matters that could have been or once had been raised in the first proceeding. Mr Manivannan has put and I accept that he has not sought to act contrary to his obligations as a litigant in this Court or, in particular, to avoid the difficulties he would confront were he to seek now to include in the first proceeding the matters canvassed in the second and third proceedings' pleadings. I accept that he perceives the issues in the three proceedings to be discrete and distinct and that it is logical for them to be ventilated in different proceedings. However, the three proceedings arise out of the same employment relationship, involve events and conduct occurring during or near to the period of that employment and are between the same parties. Quite apart from the desirability of avoiding multiple proceedings concerning disputes between the same parties over the one employment relationship and circumstances, there are efficiencies to be gained by deciding all such issues together. I understand Mr Manivannan's reasoning in having three separate proceedings, but I do not agree that those reasons justify the course he has taken.
5. I have been taken to what Jessop J said in Thirteenth Corp Pty Ltd v State [2006] FCA 979; [2006] 232 ALR 491, 505 [41]:

The cases to which I have most recently referred above, especially Moore v Inglis, show that the question whether a later proceeding is an abuse of process because of similarity with an earlier, extant proceeding is not concluded in the negative merely because the parties, the causes of action, the specific relief sought, or even the forensic issues which may arise, are not identical. In that case Mason J held that the later proceeding was abusive notwithstanding that, to accommodate all its elements, some amendments to the earlier proceeding might be required. The important, perhaps critical, point was that the court in which the earlier proceeding was commenced had jurisdiction to deal with everything raised in the later proceeding and there was no reasonable justification, based on legitimate considerations of convenience, cost or the like, for commencing the second proceeding rather than seeking to amend the earlier. One sees the same underlying values as to the requirements of a fair and efficient system for the administration of justice here as are to be seen, in a different but analogous context, in Anshun.

1. I conclude, notwithstanding what I accept to have been Mr Manivannan's good faith in commencing the second and third proceedings, that there is no reasonable justification for them. Notwithstanding his subjective motivation for commencing the second and third proceedings, based on considerations of convenience, cost and the like, in the circumstances I find that those proceedings are an abuse of process and must be dismissed.
2. This leaves Mr Manivannan to seek to amend his further amended statement of claim in the first proceeding if he wishes to pursue the matters sought to be ventilated in the second and third proceedings. One can foresee difficulties in that course, but the difficulties are likely to be connected more with the point in the case when any such application is sought than with the more fundamental question whether any such amendment would in other circumstances be allowed.
3. I therefore order in each of the second and third matters that the proceeding be dismissed.

I certify that the preceding eight (8) numbered paragraphs are a true copy of the Reasons for Judgment of Judge Cameron.