Mr S Abbas v Mitie Limited — 2024

The hearing was a public preliminary hearing to decide whether the claimant was a disabled person within section 6 of the Equality Act 2010 during the relevant period of his employment from 22 August 2022 to 21 June 2023. The claimant relied on alleged gout, plantar fasciitis, scoliosis and depression. His whistleblowing detriment and automatically unfair dismissal claims were not determined and were left to proceed to a final hearing.

The tribunal found no evidence of a diagnosis of depression and found the claimant had not shown a mental impairment of depression. For scoliosis, the tribunal accepted there was a 2019 reference to kyphoscoliosis that could be a physical impairment, but found the claimant had not shown a substantial adverse effect on normal day-to-day activities during the relevant period.

For gout and plantar fasciitis, the tribunal accepted that the claimant had physical impairments and that they were long-term because the medical evidence showed likely recurrence. However, the tribunal found that the claimant had not shown that those impairments had a substantial adverse effect on normal day-to-day activities, noting that his oral evidence was not supported by medical or other evidence and that much of it did not relate to the relevant period. The tribunal concluded that the claimant had not shown he was disabled for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, and dismissed the disability discrimination claims under sections 15, 20, 21, 26 and 27.