CONTRIBUTION TO ILL HEALTH

Thaine v London School of Economics

Tribunals have the power to award unlimited compensation to claimants who succeed in proving complaints of unlawful discrimination. In Thaine v London School of Economics, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) said that tribunals can reduce the compensation awarded for psychiatric ill health if there are a number of causes, some of which cannot be attributed to the employer.

Basic facts

Ms Thaine worked as a painter and decorator in the maintenance department of the London School of Economics (LSE), where she was the only woman out of a team of about 18 employees.

Following her dismissal from work as a result of a psychiatric illness, Ms Thaine lodged ten claims of sexual harassment, among other things.

Tribunal decision

The tribunal upheld two of the sexual harassment claims - that there were pornographic posters and magazines in the workshop where the team was based; and that she was subjected to sexist remarks when she went to the men’s changing room for the signing-in book which was supposed to be stored in the workshop.

It held that the unlawful discrimination to which she was subjected at work had been a “material and effective cause” of her ill health, and awarded her compensation.

However, the tribunal reduced the compensation by 60% because it said that a number of other factors had also contributed to her ill health - her obsessive-compulsive disorder; depressive incidents; a break-up with her boyfriend; concerns about her mother’s health; and her belief that she had been discriminated at times when the tribunal said that she had not.

She appealed against the decision to reduce her compensation.

EAT decision

The EAT said that:"the test for causation when more than one event causes the harm is to ask whether the conduct for which the defendant is liable materially contributed to the harm. In this case, the Tribunal found that it did and therefore the LSE was liable to Miss Thaine”.

However, it then went on to say that the “extent of the liability is another matter entirely. It is liable only to the extent of that contribution. It may be difficult to quantify the extent of the contribution, but that is the task which the Tribunal is required to undertake".

The EAT agreed with the tribunal in this case, saying that the LSE should not have to compensate Ms Thaine for her psychiatric ill health and all its consequences when the unlawful discrimination for which it was responsible was just one of the many causes contributing to her condition.

It also dismissed Ms Thaine’s argument that her pre-existing vulnerability to psychiatric illness should be ignored (known as the “eggshell skull” principle), saying that this related to the “remoteness” of the damage and had nothing to do with the question of what had caused it.