A Sanyaolu v Faz Sajjadi — 2021

Employment Judge Henderson, sitting with Mr N Brockmann and Ms M Jaffe, heard the case remotely by CVP on 12-14 July 2021. The claimant, A Sanyaolu, had been employed by Faz Sajjadi from early June to 7 July 2019. Her unfair dismissal claim had already been struck out because she did not have two years' continuous service. The tribunal accepted that the disability relied on for the relevant period was anxiety; disability status had been conceded, and the claimant said that autism was not the basis of the claim.

Applying s.13 and s.136 Equality Act 2010, together with the burden-of-proof approach discussed in Royal Mail Group Ltd v Efobi, the tribunal rejected most of the claimant's factual allegations. It found that the first-week comments and training were part of management and induction rather than micro-management, that the claimant had not shown the respondent blamed her for the brother's seizures, that she had not proved requests to leave work, move desks or be downgraded, and that the 41-hour unpaid wages allegation failed because Saturday working was contractual. The separate reasonable-adjustments complaint also failed because the alleged request to move desks was not accepted.

The direct disability discrimination claim succeeded only in relation to the dismissal on 7 July 2019. The tribunal found that the respondent first realised on 5 July that the claimant's anxiety was a medical condition rather than general anxiety, and that this was the operative factor in the decision to dismiss. Although the respondent said she had performance concerns and had given the claimant another chance on 27 June, the tribunal found no adequate explanation for the change in position after the later disclosure. The harassment claim failed because the one proved incident, the respondent swearing at the claimant on 8 July 2019, occurred after termination and was not found to relate to disability. The respondent conceded a holiday-pay shortfall of £98.24 net, which the tribunal recorded as payable, and it listed a further one-day remedy hearing to assess compensation, including injury to feelings, for the successful dismissal discrimination claim. The claimant's schedule of loss referred to 25 days' pay of £1,527.70, but no compensation award for the discrimination claim was quantified in this judgment.