Mr C Sterling v Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust — 2022

The claimant, a clerical officer/receptionist employed on a fixed-term contract, brought complaints of direct race discrimination, harassment related to race and victimisation. The tribunal found that most of the factual allegations were not established, preferring the respondent's evidence on disputed events concerning management, training, work allocation, meetings, sickness recording and alleged comments by managers.

The tribunal found that a cleaner made racist remarks about the claimant on 9 and 10 December 2019. It accepted that Sarah Taylor did not tell the claimant about the 9 December remark before the cleaner repeated it to him the following day. The tribunal found that this omission was unwanted conduct related to race and that, although Ms Taylor had a benign motive, it reasonably had the effect of violating the claimant's dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for a short time.

The direct race discrimination complaint failed because the established omission did not show less favourable treatment compared with an actual or hypothetical comparator, and the remaining allegations failed on the facts. The victimisation claim failed because the grievance did not amount to a protected act and the alleged detriments were not established. The successful harassment complaint was brought outside the primary limitation period, but the tribunal held it was just and equitable to extend time and listed the case for a remedy hearing.