AA Solicitors Ltd (t/a AA Solicitors) & Anor v Majid (Sex Discrimination: Injury to feelings)

An Employment Tribunal may adjust the Vento bands for injury to feelings where cogent evidence establishes a change in the value of money. It need not await appellate guidance before doing so.

An appellate challenge to the precise level of an award within the correct band will rarely succeed. The Employment Appeal Tribunal will intervene only where the award is manifestly excessive or otherwise discloses an error of law. Awards for injury to feelings are governed by the bespoke Vento guidance. Comparisons with Judicial College awards for psychiatric injury are imperfect and do not control the assessment.

The claimant was a young aspiring solicitor employed briefly by the first respondent firm. The Employment Tribunal at Manchester upheld a substantial number of her allegations of sexual harassment by the second respondent, the firm’s principal.

At the remedy stage, the Tribunal awarded £14,000 for injury to feelings, placing the claim within the middle Vento band as uprated for inflation and a 10 per cent increase. It also made awards for financial loss and aggravated damages.

The respondents appealed only the injury-to-feelings award. They contended that £14,000 was manifestly excessive, particularly when compared with awards for psychiatric injury. The central issue was whether an award above the middle of the correct Vento band warranted appellate intervention.

1. Appeal dismissed. The £14,000 award was within the correct middle Vento band and was not manifestly excessive.

2. The Tribunal was entitled to treat the harassment as a serious violation of the claimant’s dignity. The employer had treated a young employee as present for his sexual gratification rather than for work and professional development. The humiliation and hurt caused by losing her first legal job after rejecting the advances were properly relevant to injury to feelings, even though her financial loss was separately compensated.

3. Another Tribunal could permissibly have selected a lower figure within the same band. That did not establish an error of law. Appeals concerning placement within the correct band will usually turn on fact and impression and are relatively unlikely to succeed, unlike cases involving the wrong band or an award at an extreme.

4. Employment Tribunals may adjust Vento ranges where cogent evidence demonstrates a change in the value of money. They need not wait for guidance from the Employment Appeal Tribunal or a higher court. The applicable authorities also supported the 10 per cent uplift then used for injury-to-feelings awards.

5. Judicial College guidance on psychiatric injury did not assist the appeal. Injury to feelings may exist without psychiatric injury and is assessed under bespoke guidance for this statutory tort, commonly involving deliberate discriminatory conduct.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: Appeal dismissed; the Employment Tribunal’s £14,000 injury-to-feelings award was upheld.
• Employment Tribunal, Manchester: In a remedy decision signed on 1 July 2014 and sent on 4 July 2014, awarded £14,000 for injury to feelings following findings of sexual harassment.