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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> HM Prison Service v. Davis [2000] UKEAT 1150_00_3110 (31 October 2000) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2000/1150_00_3110.html Cite as: [2000] UKEAT 1150__3110, [2000] UKEAT 1150_00_3110

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APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR W HOPKINS (of Counsel) Instructed by: Mr A Turek Treasury Solicitor's Department Queen Anne's Chambers 28 Broadway London SW1H 9JS


 


HIS HONOUR JUDGE H WILSON

1. This has been the preliminary hearing of the proposed appeal by the original Respondent against the award made by the Employment Appeal Tribunal at a remedies hearing on 25 July 2000. On that occasion, the decision of the Employment Tribunal was that the Respondent should pay £6000 to the Applicant for injury to feelings, with interest running from 9 September 1995 to 25 July 2000. The decision and the amount was supported by full reasons which are set out and are amongst the papers put before us.
2. Mr Hoskins, on behalf of the proposed Appellant, relied on his Notice of Appeal and in particular what is set out in paragraph 7 of that Notice. He referred us first to paragraph 7(d) which he expanded in his argument. He said that the investigation was about a complaint against the Appellant by a fellow female officer which had been dealt with completely before the six week period with which the Employment Tribunal was concerned. That, in our view, has to be taken in the light of paragraph 9 of the extended reasons and in particular the last three lines of that paragraph.
3. Mr Hoskins then went on to expand upon what is set out in paragraph 7(b) and (c) of his Notice of Appeal, in each case in the context of paragraph 7(e). So far as subsection (c) is concerned, the concern was about how the male officer had found out her address and the fear generated by the fact that he had done so. So far as (b) is concerned, Mr Hoskins submits that the Employment Tribunal over-stated the question of fear because it did not relate it to the period with which it was concerned. He submitted that it was nothing to do with the Respondent's failure to get on expeditiously with its own investigation after the announcement of the decision of the CPS. Again, in our judgment, that has to be considered in the context of the facts found and set out in paragraph 10 of the Employment Tribunal's reasons.
4. Finally, Mr Hoskins referred to paragraph 4 of his skeleton argument and paragraph 7(a) of the Notice of Appeal. He asked, in a case where a Tribunal is assessing injury to feelings occasioned by a six weeks delay, whether it was proper to make the Respondent responsible for conduct which had continued from before that period. Our answer to that question is a resounding "Yes". The Respondent is vicariously liable for misdoings by its staff. In this case, the misdoings meant that the detriment to which the original Applicant was subjected went on unnecessarily for an extra six weeks.
5. Having dealt with those matters, Mr Hoskins came to the culmination of his submission that the award of £6000 was manifestly excessive in comparison with personal injury awards, and that therefore there was an arguable point of law for full consideration in due course. In support of this culminating argument, Mr Hoskins referred us to the cases of Armitage & Marsden-v-The Prison Service and The Prison Service-v-Johnson reported in 1997 IRLR 162 and in particular at paragraph 27. It is there stated that awards should bear some broad general similarity to the range of awards in personal injury cases, and Mr Hoskins went on to refer to the brackets of award set out in the latest issue of the Judicial Studies Board booklet about damages under "Psychiatric Damage", and more particularly "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder".
6. It seems to us that those headings are neither of them particularly apt comparators so far as the conduct set out here is concerned. In any case we have regard particularly to the contents of paragraphs 7 and 8 of the Extended Reasons, but especially 7, which was the example of the gross conduct to which this Appellant was subjected, not once, but time and again. In our view it is quite clearly far more than what is characterised as "post traumatic disorder" in personal injury cases.
7. Given the grossness of the conduct in paragraph 7, and agreeing with what the Tribunal said in paragraphs 8 and 9, in our judgement it cannot be said that, in the circumstances of this case, an award of £6000 was manifestly excessive. Accordingly, there is no point of law for further argument, and we dismiss the appeal at this stage.