Ms C Jones v Sims Engineering Systems Limited — 2020

This was a preliminary hearing to decide whether Ms C Jones was disabled during the material period, May to October 2019, by reason of asthma. The Respondent accepted that she had asthma, but disputed that it had a substantial and long-term adverse effect on her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Employment Judge Gardiner applied section 6 Equality Act 2010, Schedule 1 paragraphs 2 and 5, and the approach in Goodwin v Patent Office to the impairment, adverse effect, substantial effect, and long-term conditions.

The tribunal accepted that the claimant had asthma for many years and that it had led to short absences from work and GP attendances over a number of years, but it did not accept that the condition was substantially limiting for most of the period before May 2019. The most important evidence was the GP annual review on 4 June 2019, when the claimant was recorded as using her reliever inhaler 3 to 4 times a day, having had three exacerbations in the previous year, and being started on Montelukast. The tribunal accepted that from mid-May 2019 onwards her symptoms increased, that she was using Ventolin very frequently, and that overuse of the inhaler caused side effects including restless leg symptoms. It found that these combined physical effects amounted to a substantial adverse effect on normal day-to-day activities until her resignation in October 2019.

On the long-term element, the tribunal did not find that the heightened symptoms from May 2019 were likely to last for 12 months in the future. However, it held that the asthma had produced recurring substantial adverse effects over a much longer period from 2015 onwards, and that those earlier episodes could well recur. On that basis, by the time the material period began in May 2019 the asthma was to be treated as having a substantial and long-term adverse effect, so Ms Jones was disabled within section 6 Equality Act 2010. The tribunal recorded that the final hearing would still need to determine knowledge, discrimination, constructive unfair dismissal, and unlawful deduction of wages.