Dr Glynn Lloyd v Insensys Limited — 2025

This was a reserved judgment on a preliminary issue in a case that included complaints of unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. The tribunal was asked to decide whether Dr Glynn Lloyd was disabled by reason of what he described as High Performance Anxiety during the relevant period. The tribunal accepted that he had a mental impairment in the form of generalised anxiety disorder, but rejected his description of the condition as High Performance Anxiety because that label did not appear in the contemporaneous records.

The tribunal found that the claimant’s symptoms before March 2023 were not shown to have a substantial adverse effect on normal day-to-day activities. It relied on the absence of medical treatment until March 2023, the claimant’s continued work, commuting and social life, and the lack of contemporaneous evidence of the broader symptoms later described in the litigation. It found that the claimant’s accounts to the tribunal overstated the extent of the symptoms, and preferred his accounts to his GP and during the disciplinary process.

The tribunal accepted that two isolated panic attacks in February and March 2023 did have a substantial adverse effect, but found that the effect ceased by February 2024 because the claimant was no longer at work and was removed from the stressor that had triggered the only evidenced symptom. It noted that GP reviews in March and June 2024 recorded that he was doing well, with no low mood, sleeping well, and considering coming off sertraline. The tribunal also held that the evidence did not show that the condition was likely to last for 12 months from February 2024 or that it was likely to recur.

Accordingly, the tribunal concluded that the claimant was not a person with a disability for the relevant period October 2023 to 16 July 2024. The disability discrimination claims were therefore not well founded and were dismissed. This judgment did not determine the unfair dismissal complaint.