Sex discrimination award

Chief Constable of the West Yorkshire Police v Vento (CA LSG 13 March)

In claims for sex discrimination, sums in the range of between £15,000 and £25,000 should be awarded for injury to feelings in the most serious cases, such as where there has been a lengthy campaign of discriminatory harassment on the ground of sex or race; between £5,000 and £ 15,000 should be awarded in serious cases which did not merit an amount in the highest band; awards of between £500 and £5,000 were appropriate for less serious cases, such as where the act of discrimination was an isolated or one-off occurrence. The decision whether to award aggravated damages depended on the particular circumstances of the discrimination and on the way in which the complaint of discrimination had been handled. Regard should also be had to the magnitude of the sum total of compensation awarded for non-pecuniary loss made under the various headings of injury to feelings, psychiatric damage and aggravated damage so that, in particular, double recovery was avoided by taking appropriate account of the overlap between the individual heads of damage. In the present case an award of £25,000 compensation for injury to feelings was reduced to £18,000, while an award of £5,000 aggravated damages was upheld.