Ms E Banton, Counsel For the v Mr D Howsen, Solicitor — 2021

The claimant worked for the first respondent from 6 February 2017 in a small office where the tribunal found there was frequent sexual banter and that both sides participated in sexually explicit texts and conversation. It preferred the respondents' evidence on most disputed facts, including the evidence of the stress-breast and stress-penis secret Santa gifts, which it treated as inconsistent with the claimant's account of a workplace dominated by unwanted sexual misconduct.

Most of the claimant's sex discrimination and harassment allegations were rejected because the tribunal found that the alleged repeated name-calling, requests to see breasts, constant shoulder-rubbing, CCTV monitoring, and other specific incidents either did not happen or were not proved on the evidence. It found that criticisms of the claimant's work from around August 2018 onwards were linked to her increased workload, especially the local authority contract and cover for Ms OP, and that those criticisms were justified rather than discriminatory.

The one allegation that succeeded was the password change in December 2018, when the second respondent set the claimant's password to 'raqlovesanal' after the company's systems had been hacked. The tribunal held that this was unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which created an offensive environment for the claimant, so the harassment claim succeeded against both respondents. No remedy was fixed in this judgment, and the tribunal directed that there would need to be a further hearing if the parties could not agree remedy.

On dismissal, the tribunal found that the meeting on 24 December 2018 was about the claimant's suitability for the account manager role on the local authority contract, not about her sex. It rejected her case that she was told she could not do the role because she was a woman, and it found no shouting, screaming, or physical pushing at that meeting. The claimant left after being told to come back when she was ready to engage, then decided not to return; the text messages exchanged by 26 December 2018 and 2 January 2019 were treated as confirming that she had resigned. The unfair dismissal, constructive dismissal, and wrongful dismissal claims therefore failed.

The tribunal also rejected victimisation, finding that although the grievance of 30 January 2019 was a protected act, no later detriment was shown to have been imposed because of it. The only monetary award made in the judgment was £1,172.92 for an unlawful deduction from wages, being the deduction from the claimant's final pay for car repairs. Other wage-related complaints, including non-payment after January 2019 and statutory sick pay, failed because the tribunal found the employment had ended by resignation.