Carney v Rouf & Islam, 2 November 2004, Employment Appeal Tribunal

Sexual harassment
Carney v Rouf & Islam, 2 November 2004, Employment Appeal Tribunal

Carney was employed as a barmaid for four months at a restaurant that was partly owned by Mr Rouf. Carney left her job and subsequently brought a number of tribunal complaints, including alleging persistent sexual harassment against Rouf and the head chef, Mr Islam. These allegations were strenuously denied.

The tribunal, presented with two entirely inconsistent accounts, preferred Carney’s version of events, and found in her favour. Carney was awarded 1,500 compensation for injury to feelings. She successfully appealed.

The EAT concluded that the award was too low, and increased it to 8,500. The EAT highlighted a number of interesting factors that it thought should have been taken into account by the tribunal when awarding a suitable amount of compensation for injury to feelings in a sexual harassment case.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

Email(Required)

OptOut

From time to time, we will send you emails about selected products, events and services from Personnel Today - but you can choose to opt-out at any time. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please tick this box.

Phone

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Δ

In particular, the court noted that Carney would have suffered far less indignity if there had been some admission from the respondents that they had breached sex discrimination legislation.

The fact that Carney was subjected to sexual harassment by the owner of the business, rather than a junior employee, should also have been taken into account when assessing the compensation.