Male lawyer wins £123,300 for sex discrimination

John de Belin, 45, was made redundant from his associate position in the property division of Eversheds, a law firm in Leeds, in February 2009 after going up against his 40-year-old colleague Angela Reinholz.

Ruling on a rare case of a man claiming sex discrimination, the Leeds employment tribunal awarded Mr de Belin 123,300 after it found he been unfairly dismissed and sexually discriminated against.

In the tribunal judgment, Judge Jeremy Shulman said the firm "unfairly inflated" Ms Reinholz's work assessment scores included in the redundancy process.

The claims relate to one of the systems used to assess Mr de Belin and Ms Reinholz.

Known as "lock-up", the procedure measured the period of time between the undertaking of a piece of work and receipt of payment from the client. Points were awarded for the quickest work.

Bosses at Eversheds also used factors such as financial performance, absence record and discipline history to assess the employees, but it was the lock-up system Mr de Belin - believed to have earned about 60,000 per year after 14 years of service with the firm - had concerns about.

The lock-up was carried out in July 2008 when Ms Reinholz was off work on maternity leave.

Because she was not at work at the time, bosses awarded her the maximum notional score of two points for her assessment because it was regarded as the fairest approach to protect her while she was not there to influence the result.

Mr de Belin scored only 0.5 points for his lock-up, meaning that when the total of all assessments was calculated he trailed behind Ms Reinholz's score of 27.5 with 27 out of 39.

He initially raised his concerns during redundancy consultations but was eventually told that the process was fair and he would lose his job while Ms Reinholz - who had been with Eversheds "significantly less time" than Mr de Belin, and earned a similar figure but on a pro-rata part-time basis - would keep hers.

In the tribunal judgment, Judge Shulman said the scoring system was not within the range of reasonable responses and led to discrimination against Mr de Belin.

Judge Shulman said: "The respondent (Eversheds] elected to give the maximum notional score for lock-up to Ms Reinholz because it regarded this as the fairest approach (whilst trying to avoid a claim against the respondent by Ms Reinholz), but this clearly worked less favourably to the claimant (Mr de Belin], who was then put at risk and ultimately dismissed for redundancy."

He added: "We do not feel that Section 2(2) (of the Sex Discrimination Act] was intended to protect a woman on maternity leave in a redundancy scoring exercise where we find that she received an unfairly inflated score, when all other scores were actual, the notional score being designed to defeat a tribunal case against Ms Reinholz, which had the effect of depriving the claimant of his livelihood."

It is understood lawyers at Eversheds disagree with the ruling because Mr de Belin would have been treated in the same way if he was a woman, meaning he could not be subject to sexual discrimination.

It is understood the firm believes Ms Reinholz could have claimed discrimination if the assessments had not been carried out in this way.

A statement from Eversheds said: "The tribunal disagreed with our decision to act to ensure an employee on maternity leave was not disadvantaged.

"We were surprised by the decision of the tribunal. We stand by the actions that we took and believe that the tribunal's ruling is mistaken. We have appealed and await the date of the appeal hearing."