Case 2221330/2024 · Employment Tribunal

(1) Lisa Kearey (2) Gail De Souza (3) Sukhvinder Mallan v HCA International Ltd — 2025

Case reference: 2221330/2024
Decision date: 23 October 2025
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge B Smith

Indexed: 23 May 2026

Parties

2 named

Claimant

(1) Lisa Kearey (2) Gail De Souza (3) Sukhvinder Mallan

Respondent

HCA International Ltd

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

This was a remote hearing on 16 and 17 October 2025 before Employment Judge B Smith sitting alone. The tribunal dealt with disability-status issues for the three claimants under section 6 Equality Act 2010. It held that the first claimant, Lisa Kearey, was not a disabled person because of stress and/or depression at the relevant times, late August 2023 to 2 September 2024.

Claims and outcomes

5 findings recorded

This case has mixed outcomes under at least one legal claim type. A tribunal can uphold some allegations and dismiss others under the same legal head, so rows below may represent separate issues or allegation groups from the judgment.

Claim type	Issue or finding	Outcome	Protected characteristic	Award
Disability discrimination	First claimant (Lisa Kearey): the tribunal held she was not a disabled person as defined by section 6 Equality Act 2010 because of stress and/or depression at the relevant times (late August 2023 to 2 September 2024). The judgment did not record a separate final merits disposal for her claim.	Other	Disability	—
Disability discrimination	Second claimant (Gail De Souza): the elements of her direct disability discrimination complaint predating 3 May 2024 were dismissed. The tribunal found she was disabled by Guillain-Barre Syndrome only from 3 May 2024 to 2 September 2024, not disabled by that condition before then, and not disabled by work-related stress or stressors.	Dismissed	Disability	—
Harassment	Second claimant (Gail De Souza): the elements of her harassment complaint on grounds of disability predating 3 May 2024 were dismissed on the same basis.	Dismissed	Disability	—
Disability discrimination	Third claimant (Sukhvinder Mallan): the elements of her direct disability discrimination complaint predating 1 March 2024 were dismissed. The tribunal found she was disabled by chronic shoulder and neck pain and anxiety only from 1 March 2024 to July 2024, not disabled by those conditions before then, and not disabled by stress or depression.	Dismissed	Disability	—

Legal tests applied

1 reference

Official outcome judgment PDF

Gov.uk primary record

The official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.

Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How we got this data

Case essentials (reference, date, judge, venue, country, claim categories) are extracted from the structured metadata gov.uk publishes alongside each decision. Parties and monetary figures are extracted from the judgment PDF text. Key findings and per-claim outcomes require a second extraction pass that is not yet complete for this case — until then, the primary source linked above is the authoritative record. See full methodology.

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