Mr Y Kose v Amazon UK Services Limited — 2026

Mr Kose alleged that Amazon UK Services Limited subjected him to acts of disability discrimination between 5 December 2023 and 4 January 2024. He relied on panic attacks, anxiety and depression as mental impairments. The preliminary hearing was confined to whether he was disabled within section 6 of the Equality Act 2010 at the time of the alleged treatment.

Mr Kose attended remotely from the Netherlands and accepted that he could not give evidence from there. The Tribunal therefore attached very little weight to his witness statement and impact statement. It found little consistency between the impact statement and the medical records and treated the medical records as the more credible evidence of the effects of the asserted impairments on normal day-to-day activities.

The Tribunal found that the medical evidence from October 2023 to January 2024 showed relatively minor instances of panic attacks, ameliorated by breathing exercises and improving by January 2024. It found that the symptoms appeared to have been brought on by stressful life events, including a job interview, a visa application and the respondent's absence-management procedure. The Tribunal also found that claimed effects including loss of appetite, social withdrawal and difficulties with cleaning and personal care were not recorded in the medical evidence and were mostly directly contradicted by it.

The Tribunal concluded that, at the time of the alleged discrimination, the effect of any impairment had neither lasted nor been likely to last for at least 12 months and did not have a substantial, long-term adverse effect on Mr Kose's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. He therefore did not satisfy the statutory definition of disability. The Tribunal held that it had no jurisdiction to hear the disability discrimination claims and dismissed them in their entirety without determining the substantive allegations or making a monetary award.