Mr James Quinn v Alderhey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust — 2023

This was a preliminary hearing to decide whether Mr James Quinn had the protected characteristic of disability at the time of the alleged acts of disability discrimination in early April 2017. The tribunal set out the Equality Act 2010 definition of disability as requiring an impairment, a substantial adverse effect on normal day-to-day activities, and a long-term effect lasting or likely to last at least 12 months. It also noted that the question had to be answered without hindsight and that the burden of proving disability lay on the claimant.

The claimant gave oral evidence that he had daily intrusive suicidal thoughts from August 2015 to beyond April 2017, but the tribunal found that account unreliable and not consistent with contemporaneous records. It relied instead on medical records, occupational health records, and emails. Those records included references to stress, mood swings, low mood, and later some fleeting suicidal thoughts in December 2018, but they did not record daily suicidal thoughts in the relevant period. The tribunal also noted entries such as October 2016 records that the claimant was not feeling low and was sleeping well, and occupational health notes in 2016 and 2017 that were inconsistent with the oral evidence.

The tribunal accepted that the claimant had been prescribed a low dose of citalopram, but it did not infer from that prescription that he was disabled or diagnosed with depression. It found there was a paucity of evidence about any effect of the medication and considered that the claimant’s statement to occupational health in June 2017 that he had been intending to come off the medication suggested his own view at the relevant time that he no longer needed it. On the documentary evidence, the tribunal found no substantial adverse effect on day-to-day activities up to April 2017 and no sufficient basis to find that any condition met the statutory long-term test.

The tribunal therefore found that Mr Quinn had not proved that he was a disabled person by reason of anxiety and depression, or otherwise, in April 2017. Any disability discrimination claim relying on disability at that time was dismissed. No remedy was awarded.