April’s Employment Law Digest – Case Law Update

Record-breaking pay out in Wright-Turner v Hammersmith and Fulham

Ms Wright-Turner was awarded almost £4.6m in damages after suing her employer for disability discrimination. This is said to be the highest figure for a judgment by an ET in a public sector case.

Facts

Ms Wright-Turner was the Director of Public Service Reform at Hammersmith and Fulham. She suffered from PTSD as a consequence of her work for a previous London Council, involved in the response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy. She also had ADHD. After an incident with colleagues at a local pub, where she was left incoherent, was hyperventilating and refused to leave a toilet cubicle, colleagues were concerned for her welfare and decided to take her to A&E, where she was assessed as being depressed, suicidal and traumatised, but not intoxicated following this pub trip (it was later said by Council officers she was drunk and this was found untrue).

She was later dismissed in August 2018 in a letter which said she could not complete her probation.

Back in 2021, the Tribunal concluded that the Council’s discrimination on the basis of her PTSD was the reason for her dismissal and decided in favour of her disability discrimination claim. They also found that the Council’s officers had misled and given untrue evidence to the Tribunal — the Council’s top officers including the Chief Executive, Interim Head of Corporate Services, its Strategic Director of Governance and the Council’s Borough Solicitor and Monitoring Officer, were all involved in a deliberate deception.

The effects of her dismissal had been extremely severe and Wright-Turner said her health had deteriorated so badly that she would never work again. Her marriage ended, house repossession proceedings had been issued as she had no income.

Remedy

Exemplary damages were also awarded against the Council as punishment, likely to do with the conduct mentioned above which is how the damages were brought up even further. This was the first example of the use of exemplary damages by any ET in over a decade.

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Take Me There

TUPE- changes in working conditions

Lewis v Dow Silicones UK Ltd

When the company Mr Lewis was working for (Npower) was bought by Dow Silicones UK, he faced new working conditions and he argued that they considerably worsened his working situation. He then resigned and claimed constructive unfair dismissal. The case centred on whether the changes were substantially detrimental and if such changes were primarily due to the business transfer.

Mr Lewis won his second appeal against Dow Silicones UK where the EAT confirmed his dismissal was automatically unfair due to the transfer.

This case serves as a reassertion of the law’s role in safeguarding employee rights during company restructuring and transfers.

Gender-critical teacher loses discrimination case

Facts

Mr Lister was a teacher at New College Swindon. He was dismissed for gross misconduct as a result of refusing to refer to a transgender student by their preferred male name and pronouns.

The Student had requested Lister to refer to them by a different name. Lister felt unable to do so, and instead began gesturing and pointing at the student instead of using their requested name or pronoun. Mr Lister raised a safeguarding concern via the college’s online portal in which he asked whether A’s parents consented to this and also if A had received “requisite counselling to allow [them] to make a decision of this magnitude”

Later, the school received a complaint by another student. A disciplinary process was initiated, which resulted in Mr Lister ‘s dismissal.

He brought a claim for unfair dismissal and discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief.

Held

The ET dismissed the claim and held:

• The dismissal did not amount to an act of discrimination.
• The school’s decision to dismiss him was a proportionate response to the way in which he had expressed his beliefs and given his indication that his behaviour would not have changed going forward.

What do you need to know

The matters in these cases although very serious could have been avoided with effective and regular training to ensure employers and employees know what is and isn’t acceptable in the modern workplace. To speak to one of our team about training packages please do fill in your details below and we will get in touch.