Aggravated damages

Blundell v Governing Body of St Andrew’s Catholic Primary School and another; EAT 6 August; NLJ 3 September p1166

The employer appealed against an employment tribunal’s award of compensation to the employee teacher, Mrs Blundell, for victimisation. It also appealed against a recommendation that it write a letter of apology to Mrs Blundell in terms that the tribunal set out, and send it to the other teachers and the pupils’ parents. In previous proceedings, Mrs Blundell had lodged a claim alleging sex discrimination against the school and the head teacher. After those proceedings were concluded she was dismissed and she brought the present proceedings in which she successfully claimed victimisation, unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal. The tribunal awarded £22,000 for injury to feelings, having found that the school’s conduct had been akin to a campaign of discriminatory harassment aimed at forcing her out of her job and which had included an assessment of her teaching that had been deliberately fault finding. It awarded £5,000 for aggravated damages because the school’s conduct at the remedies hearing had been to try to undermine the tribunal’s finding at the liability hearing that Mrs Blundell had been a good teacher, and that conduct had caused her further offence, thereby aggravating her injury to feelings.