Mr S Sheun v Northern General Hospital (Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust) — 2020

Mr S Sheun, a service support engineer of Chinese ethnic origin, brought harassment, victimisation and race discrimination claims against Northern General Hospital. The direct and indirect race discrimination claims were withdrawn after a preliminary hearing and dismissed by judgment of 5 July 2019. During the December 2019 hearing the victimisation claim was also withdrawn and dismissed separately, leaving the harassment claim for determination.

The tribunal found that the claimant's informal complaint in December 2016 was about Mr Baldwin and Mr Ringrose mimicking Chinese accents, including the pronunciation of Tsing Tao, rather than merely a remark about MSG. It rejected several alleged incidents as not proved, including the alleged use of 'chinks'/'chinky', 'Paki', 'Chinese blood', 'Bangkok la' and the Police Academy complaint, but found that Mr Baldwin had on the balance of probabilities made the Bruce Lee-style noise on 14 December 2018, had made similar noises on other occasions, had mimicked the pronunciation of Tsing Tao, and had mimicked a Chinese accent in the Indiana Jones discussion.

Applying section 26 Equality Act 2010, the tribunal held that the proven incidents were unwanted conduct related to race and that, in the circumstances including the claimant's earlier experiences of racism, it was reasonable for him to regard them as violating his dignity. It rejected the respondent's section 109(4) reasonable steps defence, held that the earlier and later incidents formed a continuing act for time-limit purposes under Hendricks, and recorded no monetary award because the decision was liability-only.