News

June 29, 2010

Case law: depressed employee wins and goes back to tribunal

Employers must take care to identify potential disability discrimination claims, even where it appears that the employee is not disabled, following a recent ruling.

In this case, a job applicant (the claimant) applied for and was offered a job, subject to completion of a medical questionnaire. Before completing the questionnaire, she spoke to an HR manager at the company and told her about her history of depression. A few days later, the claimant was contacted by the company and told that a recruitment freeze had been imposed and the offer to her was withdrawn. She then started proceedings in an employment tribunal for disability discrimination.

At a preliminary hearing, an employment tribunal ruled that, at the material time, the claimant was not suffering from ‘clinical depression’ amounting to a disability within the meaning of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The claimant appealed against the ruling, and the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) determined that the tribunal had been wrong to rule that the claimant was not disabled, and sent the issue back to be considered by another tribunal.

The EAT gave some useful guidance on issues arising in such cases, including its view that a GP is fully qualified to express an opinion on whether a patient is suffering from depression; while a GP’s evidence may have less weight than that of a specialist, their evidence cannot be ignored if the evidence of a specialist is not available or is inconclusive. The EAT also discussed the related issues of ‘symptoms of low mood and despondency’ and ‘clinical depression’.

 
Operative date

• Immediate

Territories
England, Wales and Scotland