The employer ran a reward and recognition scheme in respect of long-serving employees, whereby such employees would be presented with a model. The model would be personalised in some way so as to reflect the individual concerned. Such an award was presented to the employee; the model comprising a man in blue with his arm in a sling. Two days thereafter he was certified sick and did not subsequently return.

A consultant psychiatrist diagnosed the employee as suffering from a depressive episode triggered by an insensitive incident in the workplace. The employee complained to the employment tribunal, inter alia, under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. The essence of his complaint was not that the model was an image of him, but that it did not contain anything identifying him with his work, whereas many models received by other employees contained some such identifying feature. The tribunal dismissed the complaint under the Act on the basis, inter alia, that given the employee’s duties, there were no obvious links which related to his work, and that in any case, the lack of such items did not relate to his disability and therefore fell outwith the scope of the Act. The employee appealed against that finding.

Held – The appeal would be allowed. In the circumstances, the conclusion reached by the tribunal was unsustainable and not one to which any tribunal could reasonably have come. Most of the models presented some kind of work place connection. It was unlikely that had the employee not had his disability, he would have been depicted simply as a person in blue. The only explanation for the model was that because he was disabled, an identifiable model could be made by reference to his disability. Moreover, a reasonable employee in the employee’s position would or might well take the view that he had been subjected to detriment by the way that he had been singled out from his colleagues at a presentation ceremony by the identification of a disability.

Accordingly, a decision of disability discrimination would be substituted for the finding below.