Posted on 20 May 2010

Man successfully sues in sex discrimination case

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Eversheds has been ordered to pay £123,000 in a rare case of a man claiming sex discrimination.

John de Belin, an associate at the firm’s property division in Leeds was one of two facing redundancy with the other, Angela Reinholz being on maternity leave. In deciding who to retain, the firm assessed the two of them for their financial performance, discipline history and absence records and Mr de Belin was sacked after losing the exercise by just half a point.

However, he later found out that the test score had been ‘unfairly inflated’ in Mrs Reinholz’s favour. Eversheds awarded her a maximum score, even though she was on maternity leave and justified the decision by saying that any other decision would have deprived her of the opportunity to show that she could have scored the maximum, leaving the firm open to a possible sexual discrimination claim from her.

Mr de Belin himself bought a claim at the Leeds Employment Tribunal for sex discrimination, which found that Eversheds’ way of marking had tipped the balance in Mrs Reinholz’s favour. In the judgement Judge Jeremy Shulman said that it “had the effect of depriving Mr de Belin of his livelihood. We therefore find that Eversheds discriminated against Mr de Belin on the grounds of his sex.”

The redundancy came at a time when Eversheds was cutting staff levels across Britain. Mr de Belin had worked with the firm for 14 years and earned around £100,000. Mrs Reinholz is thought to have earned about the same but had worked fewer years.

A spokesman for Eversheds said: “The tribunal disagreed with our decision to act to ensure an employee on maternity leave was not disadvantaged. We were surprised by the decision of the tribunal. We stand by the actions that we took and believe that the tribunal’s ruling is mistaken. We will be appealing.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1279205/Lawyer-axed-firm-scared-sack-pregnant-colleague.html