Employment Law Case Update: Disability discrimination and harassment

Discrimination against an employee can take many forms; disability discrimination being one of them.  Our Employment Law team today reviews the case of Lawton v Crystal Ball Limited 2021 and an employee who was humiliated and harassed owing to his disability.

Mr Lawton suffered ongoing knee problems which made it hard for him to walk which amounted to a disability. He had requested to work from home when the lift wasn’t working after being left humiliated when he reached the bottom of five flights of stairs and was told he had taken too long evacuating after a fire drill.

When Occupational Health advisors said that Mr Lawton needed reasonable adjustments to be made, the director’s attitude changed towards him and he began to be ignored in the office. The director also said that the arrangement for Mr Lawton to work from home was conditional on him meeting a set of objectives.

After being hospitalised due to pain in his knee, Mr Lawton requested to work from home for at least a couple of days. This was agreed, but he was told that he must provide a detailed list of tasks that he had carried out while working from home – something that had not been asked of another employee who worked one day a week from home.

The company then took disciplinary action against Mr Lawton because of a security breach of the company’s server, claiming Mr Lawton had neglected his duties and issuing him with a first written warning. It also launched a disciplinary investigation into claims that Mr Lawton had added documents to his own personnel file, which were upheld.

Mr Lawton resigned in December 2019 due to disability discrimination, harassment, bullying and humiliation, unfounded allegations of poor performance or misconduct, failure to provide reasonable adjustments for his disability, being subjected to unreasonable treatment and being forced to work in breach of health and safety law.

The Employment Tribunal (ET) found that he had been constructively and unfairly dismissed, discriminated against because of his disability, victimised and harassed.

The ET concluded that “Mr Singh had a discriminatory reason for instigating disciplinary procedures against Mr Lawton. We consider that Mr Singh had an agenda to remove Mr Lawton from the business. This was a progressive situation which intensified over time as Mr Singh became more frustrated”. Judge Benson said that “in our view although he had been advised that he was required to comply with the Equality Act, he took it upon himself to remind [Mr Lawton] that this was not something which suited him or the business and was at best an inconvenience to him. This caused [Mr Lawton] to be unable to be secure in the adjustments which had been agreed with him. We find that [references] to his hours of work and working from home by Mr Singh [were] intimidatory and amounted to unfavourable treatment”.

This case is a clear example of disability discrimination. Employers are reminded that they cannot dismiss an employee or treat them unfavourably because of a disability, and that these employees are entitled to some enhanced protections from dismissal. Employers are also reminded of their duty to make reasonable adjustments.

If you have any questions regarding this article, you can call our Employment team today on 023 8071 7717 or email employment@warnergoodman.co.uk.

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ENDS

This is for information purposes only and is no substitute for, and should not be interpreted as, legal advice.  All content was correct at the time of publishing and we cannot be held responsible for any changes that may invalidate this article.