Case 2403575/2017 · Employment Tribunal

Mrs N Lawler v The Co-Operative Group Ltd and 1 other — 2018

Case reference: 2403575/2017
Decision date: 13 November 2018
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge T Vincent Ryan
Venue: Liverpool
Panel members: Ms F Crane, Mrs J C Ormshaw

Indexed: 19 May 2026

Parties

3 named

Claimant

Mrs N Lawler

Respondents

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

The tribunal found that the claimant was a disabled person and that the respondents knew of her disability. It found she resigned on 11 September 2017, but that the first respondent had not committed a repudiatory breach of contract. The home visit, welfare contact, grievance handling, and email distribution-list decisions were found not to be conduct calculated or likely to destroy or seriously damage trust and confidence.

The reasonable adjustments claims failed. The tribunal found that some earlier meeting-location complaints had crystallised by May 2016 and were presented out of time. For the remaining allegations, it found that the respondent had made adjustments including home working, transport flexibility, overnight accommodation, relocation to Ambrose Grove, and equipment, and that it did not operate a policy refusing light duties or reasonable adjustments for managers.

The tribunal upheld part of the disability harassment claim against the second respondent. It found that repeated comments about being "on the pitch", the claimant's use of stairs, her walking stick, embarrassment, causing fuss, and her health in connection with restructuring were unwanted conduct related to disability and reasonably had the harassing effect alleged. Other harassment allegations were dismissed because they were out of time, not related to disability, or not made out on the facts.

Claims and outcomes

4 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
Constructive dismissal	The tribunal found the claimant resigned and was not dismissed; the constructive unfair dismissal claim failed.	Dismissed	—	—
Disability discrimination	Failure to make reasonable adjustments claim. The Altrincham/Shaws operations meeting allegations were dismissed as out of time without a just and equitable extension; the remaining reasonable adjustment allegations were dismissed as not well-founded.	Dismissed	Disability	—
Harassment	Harassment related to disability was upheld for remarks by the second respondent at a March 2016 divisional meeting, in July 2016, at Altrincham in April/May 2016, on 2 November 2016, in late 2016 at Runcorn including repeated comments in January/February 2017, and by telephone on 13 February 2017.	Upheld	Disability	—
Harassment	Harassment allegations concerning Mrs Hopkin-Hoggarth in 2014 and on 18 December 2015 were dismissed as out of time. Allegations concerning Richard Lancaster in July 2016 and the home visit on 9 March 2017 were dismissed as not well-founded.	Dismissed	Disability	—

Legal tests applied

10 references

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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