The Employment Tribunal (ET) in Wright v The Governing Body of Cardinal Newman Catholic School [2024] awarded the Claimant £850,000 for damages for unfair dismissal, disability discrimination and victimisation.
Mr Wright was employed as the Head of Maths at Cardinal Newman Catholic Secondary School in Hove, East Sussex from 2005. At the ET hearing, Mr Wright admitted that he became “fixated” on problems. In 2015, Mr Wright was heavily involved in supporting a former colleague in their successful ET claim against the school.
The following year, Mr Wright said that an extract from the school handbook was placed in his pigeonhole and his name was listed with a black cross next to it. He said this indicated there were concerns about his performance and he felt targeted for having supported and questioned his employer.
Mr Wright raised a grievance over what he believed was a deliberate and sustained attempt to undermine him. His grievance was dismissed in 2017. Mr Wright appealed. While the appeal investigation was being conducted, the school offered him a settlement agreement to terminate his employment. Mr Wright rejected this offer. Also at the same time, he had sought an autistic referral. He informed the school of his subsequent confirmatory diagnosis in November 2017.
The headteacher, James Kilmartin, allegedly decided that Mr Wright had to leave. Mr Wright was suspended in June 2017 pending a disciplinary investigation to consider whether he could continue to work at the school due to an irretrievable breakdown of the relationships between Mr Wright, Mr Kilmartin and the senior leadership team. Disciplinary action was not carried out, instead there was discussion about what reasonable adjustments Mr Wright needed.
Eventually the school suggested that Mr Wright take on a new role as a High Performance Coach (HPC) but expected Mr Wright to withdraw the ET claim he had filed. Mr Wright rejected this offer, stating that he would have accepted the HPC role if it led to his return as Maths Subject Lead but that his ET claim did not just go away because whilst employed he had the right not to be victimised. The school could not accept this and terminated his employment on 31 May 2019 stating that their impression was that if Mr Wright’s complaints had not been resolved then Mr Wright could not return to work. They said that they had exhausted all avenues of finding a mutually acceptable resolution.
Mr Wright brought claims in the ET including unfair dismissal, victimisation and discrimination arising from disability. The reason for his dismissal advanced by the school was that there had been a breakdown of the relationship. The ET disagreed and said that this was not the real reason, instead it was because Mr Wright would not withdraw his ET claim.
The school had been willing for Mr Wright to continue to work for them in the HPC role, which undermined this argument. Mr Wright won his claim for unfair dismissal for this reason and ET held that it followed that he had been victimised, i.e., subjected to an act of detriment because he had filed an ET claim (a protected act under the Equality Act) and was now being punished for not withdrawing it. The ET also criticised school officials for a complete failure to look at how autism might have affected Mr Wright’s behaviour. If the school thought that Mr Wright was not capable of doing his role, then they should have performance managed him to assess whether the relationship could improve instead of terminating in the manner they did. He therefore succeeded in his claim for discrimination arising from disability.
At a remedies hearing, Mr Wright was awarded the following damages:
- £75,000 for personal injury
- £25,000 for legal costs
- £750,000 for compensation for injury to feelings, loss of earnings, pension loss and interest.
The judgments can be found here.
This had to be the right outcome for a neurodiverse employee who was treated so unfairly by his employee. There is a salutary note to heed however. It took Mr Wright five years to get to a remedy hearing where he was awarded damages. Sadly, some tribunals are taking a long time to determine cases, and I am sure that Mr Wright had to emotionally endure a lot while he conducted his litigation. He was vindicated and received just compensation but I am sure it will take him a long time to heal from what has happened because it took so long to get to this point.
This blog was written by Anita Vadgama, Partner at didlaw.
