NHS consultant awarded £4.5 million in Employment Tribunal in 2011

[PrettyDamnCosmic]

I was about to post this on the Sandie Peggie thread as this case came up in discussion there but I thought it would sidetrack that thread & was worthy of discussion on its own. It's historic but a good indication of how badly the NHS can behave when ganging up on an employee.

Several threads back passing reference was made to another NHS Employment Tribunal case in 2011 that was gob-smackingly awful. The claimant was awarded £4.5 million for unfair dismissal, sex discrimination and race discrimination.

I found & posted the judgment & have now had the opportunity to read through it properly. Briefly in 2002 the claimant Dr Eva Michalak was appointed a consultant in Acute Medicine. She was the first female consultant in that department & there was some bad feeling among her colleagues when she took maternity leave shortly after taking up her appointment & the others were forced to cover her absence. There was then a sustained campaign of bullying & plotting to have her fired that involved many consultants & went on for years with secret meetings. She was eventually fired in 2009 after a trumped up disciplinary

Her husband acted for her at the ET. He gave up his job to work full time on the case. She was a total wreck diagnosed with PTSD & unable to ever work again all related to how she had been treated by the Trust & her colleagues. The Trust claimed that there had been no plan to push her out of the job but during the process of discovery documents revealed that is exactly what the Trust had been doing & it was all documented.

The judgment is just extraordinary. The Trust CEO lied to the court. The Medical Director lied to the court. The HR Director lied to the court. Three of the four members of the disciplinary panel who decided to dismiss the claimant were unable under cross-examination to explain why she had been dismissed.

In rejecting the claimant's contention that future loss of earnings should be calculated on the basis that she would only have retired at 75 years of age, the tribunal relied on no less an authority than John Lennon and quoted the lyrics from his song “Beautiful Boy” (1980), namely: “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans”.

I have included links to the judgment plus some other discussions of the case. It shows just how awful NHS culture can be & how appallingly employees get treated. I hope that there is enough reading here for everyone until the Sandie Peggie tribunal resumes tomorrow.

data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2014-1569/1810815_2008_Judgment.pdf

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-16224062

www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/husband-of-doctor-in-ps45m-bias-payout-speaks-out-1913419

www.foxwilliams.com/2016/10/03/nhs-consultant-awarded-4-5-million-for-sex-and-race-discrimination/

app.croneri.co.uk/law-and-guidance/case-reports/michalak-v-mid-yorkshire-nhs-trust-2011-employment-tribunal-case-no

Thanks for starting this thread. This might have got lost in the fast moving NHS Fife threads. I will read the links when I have a bit more time.

Bloody hell

The trust and three senior staff members have been ordered to pay Dr Michalak £4,452,206.60 for the sex and race discrimination.

This from the BBC report is interesting does it mean that three members of staff were held personally financially liable and have to pay out of their own pockets?

It’s unsurprising but still deeply shameful that this happened.

Of course, I’m minded that there are Trusts and senior appointments that think, like the Post Office scandal, that the problem was that it was documented rather than it should never have happened.

My understanding is that would not be enforceable if it was true

Only part way throught the Judgement and already the Judge has called several of the senior staff and doctors acknowledged liars - JFC.

Ah, this must be the case I saw on X earlier in the week. Thank you for posting it.

The NHS is rife with this kind of behavior. Huge amount of ass covering. Very hierarchical. Standard response is always to hide wrong doing. So many whistle blowers are gotten rid of. It sounds like this only came out because in a Fifesque act of incompetency, they sent her the notes of the secret meetings they held to try and get rid of her.

Isn’t it typical though, that resentment reared its head after maternity leave. If a woman is good enough to make consultatant, she has the perfect right to go for it, even if she plans to have a family. It’s one year, perhaps two, out of a lifetime of work. Now they’ve thrown away someone with all that experience. It’s honestly ridiculous.

Dr Michalak’s career and life was ruined. Just reading the summary about the cross-examination (para 37-41) shows you how traumatised she was. That sort of sustained campaign over a number of years is horrendous. I am glad she was vindicated.

I agree with @RethinkingLife about managers thinking the problem was that it was documented. I honestly think if these people had to pay compensation personally, we wouldn’t have these scandals.

I am very interested to learn what happened to the respondents in terms of their careers after the tribunal and if the Trust learned anything from it.

Towards the end of the findings (I think maybe in the section setting out damages) it says what’s happened to a few of those involved.

I’ve name changed for this, I was unaware of this case, completely missed the reporting of the tribunal, but I worked at that trust at around the time some of this was happening, about 20 years ago. I knew many of those mentioned, and I am shocked. The trust was struggling, in a financial mess, but these behaviours are beyond shocking. The incompetence doesn’t surprise me nearly so much. I left without a job to go to because I’d had enough of the pressures of working there.

And destroyed her permanently in the process. Utterly appalling.

There lots of bullying amongst nursing staff … women to women …

Good grief @PrettyDamnCosmic that is extraordinary. Having read the main judgment, my jaw is on the floor, but I can also recognise the pattern of events and behaviour to some extent.

I wonder what happened afterwards. I wonder if the case is used in training to explain what not to do tbh.

Unless i misremembered, one of the issues with this case was all those on the panels who conspired against her were both male and white British.

And that was before the gender bilge gave a cover for absolute misogyny

You only need to look at Graham Pink in Stockport in the 80's. He was concerned with elderly patient care and was treated appallingly by the NHS.

Someone posted this a few threads back on the NHS Fife ones. I hope Sandie is equally well compensated.

The disciplinary panel was 50% women. A number of women were also complicit in agreeing to misrepresent, to write and repeat falsehoods. Dianne Nicholls was Head of HR and her involvement attracted substantial criticism.

A quick skim of before and after for several of the key players shows a predictable pattern of awards for public service and remunerative appointments. It seems as if participation in this has been no detriment to some of them.

I think there is something interesting about the eminence grise but can’t confirm it readily.

Completely different, this affair had a life-altering impact on the claimant’s ability to function in the basics of everyday life. And it also reflected that the husband had wholly given up work to prepare this case.

The above only refers to the award. Some of the patterns if behaviour make for horribly familiar reading. It also has demonstrated my private conviction that, like the key players here, there will be few detriments to the careers and paths to honours for the main dramatis personae from NHS Fife.

Ok its also 2011, 14 years ago things have gone up in price

Sandie has been lucky to have a backer. But we have no idea if she needs to pay that backer back from her compensation.
She deserves to be suitably compensated and like it or not this is a bit of a landmark case.

I remember this at the time (it was covered extensively on doctors.net - I think Eva may have been a member, or perhaps I am misremembering).

Unfortunately I am sure similar things still go on. The NHS has no functioning management/disciplinary/HR structure. Doctors get no HR/line management training (they get lots of management buzz-word training, but nothing useful like “here is how you manage a disciplinary”). HR generally don’t want to know. It’s a shitshow.

After accounting for inflation that award of £4.54 million would be worth £6.72 million today.

Sandie won’t have to repay the backer. i think we all know who the backer is and this case has legal ramifications that go far beyond Sandie as an individual. The fact she’s also -correctly imo- going for the union shows that the backer thinks the greater good in exposing gender woo in the mainstream is worth far more to society than that the cost of the tribunal and union defence. And it is. Sandie winning will change everything, as there’ll be legal precedence to challenge men in women’s single sex spaces and that, coupled with the Supreme Court ruling means that no employer will be able to overlook it without realising that they leave themselves open to being taken to the cleaners. I hope so anyway.

Gosh- some strong language from the panel members- one Doctor's claim was 'bogus'.