EAT Disability discrimination – Reasonable adjustments/Justification
1. The employers appealed against two findings by the Tribunal that they had failed to make reasonable adjustments for her disability and against the finding that their admittedly disability-related dismissal of the employee was not justified.
2. The first adjustment which the Tribunal concluded the employers ought to have made and which was the subject of the appeal was the obtaining of a medical report as to the employees’ condition and prognosis. Held (i) that in the light of the EAT’s decision in Tarbuck and subsequent cases it was not in law open to the Tribunal to find that such an adjustment should have been made (ii) the Tribunal had, following Mid Staffordshire (Tarbuck not being yet reported) concluded that the adjournment should be made without carrying out the balancing exercise required by s18B(1) of the DDA.
3. The second adjustment was re-allocation of the employee’s-duties while she was unable to work or to work fully. Held that the Tribunal had failed to take all the relevant evidence as to the employees’ condition and prognosis into account and had not concluded whether it was reasonable for the employers to have to make the adjustment.
4. As to justification, the Tribunal had failed to conclude whether, had the adjustment by way of provision of equipment to assist the employee (which adjustment was not the subject of appeal) the employee would have been enabled thereby to return to work.
5. The decision as to the first adjustment was reversed. The decisions as to the second adjustment and justification were remitted for reconsideration by the same Tribunal.
Judges:
Burke QC J
Citations:
[2007] UKEAT 0507 – 06 – 1812
Links:
Citing:
Cited – Tarbuck v Sainsbury’s Supermarkets EAT 8-Jun-2006
EAT The appellant was disabled. She was found to have been unfairly dismissed and the subject of three acts of disability discrimination. One of these was an alleged failure to consult which was treated as a . .
Cited – Mid-Staffordshire General Hospitals NHS Trust v Cambridge EAT 4-Mar-2003
EAT The claimant had presented claims of sex and disability discrimination and victimisation. She suffered injury to her throat when builders demolished a wall near her workstation.
Held: The employer’s . .
Cited – British Gas Services Ltd v McCaull EAT 28-Sep-2000
EAT Disability Discrimination – Adjustments . .
Cited – Smiths Detection – Watford Ltd v Berriman EAT 9-Aug-2005
EAT The Employment Tribunal was wrong to find that the Respondent had discriminated against the Claimant under Section 6(1) of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 because it omitted to find what arrangements . .
Cited – Rothwell v Pelikan Hardcopy Scotland Ltd EAT 23-Sep-2005
EAT DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION
Reasonable adjustments
UNFAIR DISMISSAL
Procedural fairness
The claimant, who suffered from Parkinson’s Disease, claimed that he had been unfairly dismissed and . .
Cited – Hay v Surrey County Council CA 16-Feb-2007
The claimant had been employed driving a mobile library. She came to suffer back problems, and was dismissed when the respondent said that she could not work within a library without the ability to lift, after she turned down a move to a different . .
Cited – Southampton City College v Randall EAT 22-Sep-2005
EAT Disability Discrimination: Reasonable Adjustments and Justification; Unfair Dismissal: Reasonableness of Dismissal
The Employment Tribunal is correct in finding that as employer did not regard the . .
Cited – Sinclair Roche and Temperley and others v Heard and Another EAT 22-Jul-2004
EAT Sex discrimination claim by former partners against the partnership and individual partners: direct discrimination (in both cases) and indirect discrimination (in one) found by ET.
(i) ET must, if . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment, Discrimination
Updated: 12 July 2022; Ref: scu.262898