A MAN sacked by Colchester MP Sir Bob Russell after a confrontation with a colleague has had his case thrown out by the Court of Appeal.

The protracted saga began when John Scott was dismissed as a parttime case worker for the Lib Dem MP in June 2009.

A year later, an employment tribunal judge dismissed Mr Scott’s claims his dismissal was a breach of contract, and the result of sex discrimination and alleged whistle-blowing.

Mr Scott, of Ballast Quay, Fingringhoe, then took his case to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, where, in April 2012, a judge struck out his claim as “misconceived” and ordered him to pay £2,500 costs.

Mr Scott, 68, then went to the Court of Appeal, where Lord Justices Laws, McFarlane and Beatson upheld the appeal tribunal’s dismissal of his claims as “unreasonable and vexatious”.

Speaking this week after the ruling, Sir Bob accused Mr Scott of wasting nearly £50,000 of public money by persisting with the case.

He said he had written to Lib Dem Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Speaker John Bercow, Essex Police, and other Parliamentary authorities about the case.

Sir Bob added: “This is complete vindication for me against someone who has, in my view, waged a nasty campaign for more than four years.

“The cost to the public purse runs to tens of thousands of pounds. His one-man campaign has involved hundreds of hours of high-level public officials being diverted to spend time responding to his torrent of letters.

“Added to that is the huge amount of time taken up by those involved in the employment tribunal system and the courts.

“I offered, four years ago, not to proceed with an application for costs if Mr Scott withdrew his claims.

“This case has dragged on and on longer than the First World War.

“Mr Scott has lost at every stage, but carried on building up even higher legal costs and completely wasting my time and everyone else’s.”

At the original hearing, Sir Bob said Mr Scott had been fired after an aggressive confrontation with a fellow case worker at Sir Bob’s Colchester offices in Magdalen Hall, Wimpole Road, something Mr Scott has denied all along.