In person For the v Respondent — 2022

This was a preliminary hearing on whether the claimant and his mother were disabled persons within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010, and on the correct name of the respondent. The tribunal refused to strike out the response or prevent the respondent from contesting disability, despite late compliance with directions, because that would not have been proportionate. It also accepted further evidence on the mother's position and later recorded that the respondent accepted Olive Maunder was disabled by reason of depression.

On the claimant's own position, the tribunal found that he suffered anxiety and panic attacks from 2016, with associated effects including difficulty sleeping, eating, driving, socialising, concentrating and speaking on the phone. It accepted that his paraesthesia and migraines were more likely than not symptoms of stress and anxiety, and that flare-ups of peptic ulcer disease were not shown to have been caused by anxiety, although anxiety and stress were found to exacerbate those episodes. The tribunal also held that the claimant's use of CBT techniques when coping with attacks counted as measures taken to treat or correct the impairment for the purposes of Schedule 1 paragraph 5.

The tribunal concluded that the claimant was not yet a disabled person during the acute health anxieties in 2016, including April and May 2016, because it was not shown at that stage that the impairment could well last for at least 12 months. It found that once the anxiety attacks continued beyond that period, it became apparent that they were likely to recur, and that the claimant was therefore a disabled person from March 2017, but not before. The judgment did not determine the merits of the remaining discrimination claims or any remedy.