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30 April 2025
Case Study
In what seems like a “good news” judgment, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (“the EAT”) has ruled that an Employment Tribunal’s injury to feelings award of £10,000 for pregnancy/maternity discrimination was manifestly excessive.
In the case of Graham v Eddie Stobart Limited, the only act of pregnancy/maternity discrimination found by the Employment Tribunal was that the employer had failed to take adequate steps to deal with a grievance that the employee had twice emailed to it but had been blocked by its firewall. Although every case turns on its facts, this did seem to be a very high award for such a case.
Ms Graham worked for Eddie Stobart and was one of nine employees placed at risk of redundancy. As she was on maternity leave then, she asserted her statutory right to be offered one of the four available new roles in preference to others – she believed that it constituted suitable alternative employment. Her employer did not consider that the role was suitable for her and therefore required her to attend a competitive interview. She was not successful in that interview and was not offered the role.
Ms Graham raised a grievance about this to her employer via email. She received no reply, and when she queried this, she was told to resend it. At a subsequent meeting at which she was dismissed by reason of redundancy, she enquired about her unanswered grievance. She was told that HR would look into it. Sometime later, it transpired that her emails had been blocked by the company’s IT firewall system.
Case Study
Whilst some of her claims to the Employment Tribunal were dismissed, the ET did find that the failure to deal with her grievance was an act of pregnancy/maternity discrimination.
While the ET accepted that the two grievance emails had been blocked by the company’s firewall, the company nevertheless knew she had raised a grievance because she had repeatedly alluded to it and therefore Eddie Stobart had not done enough to follow this up.
In the absence of an acceptable explanation, the ET considered that her absence on maternity leave materially influenced the company’s approach to the grievance. It awarded her £10,000 for injury to feelings (which was at the lower end of the middle Vento band at the relevant time).
Eddie Stobart appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, arguing that the award of £10,000 was excessive, and the EAT agreed, finding that there was limited evidence of injury in this case.
Whilst the Claimant had said that she was shocked and upset because of the company’s dismissive attitude towards her, there had been no finding that the injury endured beyond the immediate experience of the detriment, and no finding of any adverse effect on her work, personal life or quality of life. In addition, there was no evidence of ridicule or humiliation. Instead, it found that the failure to deal with the grievance was limited in its scope and impact. This could therefore only have been a lower Vento band case, and it was perverse for the tribunal to place it in the middle band.
The EAT therefore concluded that the initial £10,000 injury to feelings award was perverse and substituted an award of £2,000 instead.
In any case where discrimination is found (and also in a number of other cases, such as whistle-blowing), an ET can make an award for injury to feelings to reflect the hurt and suffering caused. There is no exact science for calculating this, so they have to look at the manner of the behaviour and the upset caused.
For example:
Our advice would also be to listen to employees who tell you they have raised a grievance and investigate why this has not been dealt with. Although this employee’s dismissal was held to be fair, it was unwise not to have pursued the existence of a grievance, and another case may find it differently.
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