Latest in Employment Law>Case Law>Kelly v Covance Laboratories Ltd
Kelly v Covance Laboratories Ltd
Published on: 23/12/2015
Issues Covered: Discipline Discrimination
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Background

The Employment Appeal Tribunal in England and Wales has found that an instruction to not speak Russian in the workplace was not discriminatory in the circumstances. The employers are an animal testing laboratory which had previously made it the subject of attention from animal rights activists, including violent assaults on its employees. Given their history and the claimant's 'unusual' behaviour, the instruction was not unreasonable.

The EAT concluded that the employment tribunal had found that (i) the same instruction had been given to the Claimant’s named comparators (even if not actually passed on) and (ii) would have been given to “some other employee speaking some language other than English in circumstances that gave [the employer] cause for concern”.

The ET had thus reached permissible conclusions on the case whether take to be one of actual comparison (as put by the Claimant) or on the basis of a correctly constructed hypothetical comparator.

http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2015/0186_15_2010.html

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Disclaimer The information in this article is provided as part of Legal Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article. This article is correct at 23/12/2015
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