Base Childrenswear Limited -v- Miss N Lomana Otshudi [UKEAT/0267/18]

Discrimination – Remedy

A Tribunal is not bound to award injury to feelings in the lower vento band just because it is a one off act of discrimination.

The EAT said “Moving on to the ET’s assessment of injury to feelings in this case, it is right to say that, in deciding whether the case should fall within the lower or middle Vento bands, an ET might think it relevant to have regard to whether the discrimination in question formed part of a continuing course of conduct (perhaps a campaign of harassment over a long period)or whether it was only a one-off act. That said, each such assessment must be fact and case specific. It is, after all, not hard to think of cases involving one-off acts of discrimination that might well justify an award falling within the middle or higher Vento brackets, or other cases involving a continuing course of conduct that are properly to be assessed as falling within the lower band. Simply describing discrimination as an isolated or one-off act may not provide the complete picture and I do not read the Vento guidance as placing a straightjacket on the ET such that it must only assess such cases as falling within the lower band. The question for the ET must always be, what was the particular effect on this individual complainant.”