Law firm loses sex bias case over male solicitor

A LAW firm has lost its appeal against an employment tribunal decision that a male solicitor was the victim of sexual discrimination when he was made redundant.

John de Belin, 45, lost his associate position in the property division of Eversheds, in Leeds, in February 2009 after going up against a 40-year-old colleague in a redundancy exercise.

Angela Reinholz had been on maternity leave during a crucial time when employees were scored on their performance as part of the redundancy process.

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In a rare case, the original employment tribunal in Leeds last year found Mr de Belin had been unfairly dismissed and sexually discriminated against.

Yesterday an employment appeal tribunal in London upheld this decision but ruled that Mr de Belin’s compensation award of £123,300 was wrong and ordered it to be reconsidered by a fresh tribunal.

The original judgment said the firm “unfairly inflated” Ms Reinholz’s work assessment scores included in the redundancy process. This related to one of the systems used to assess Mr de Belin and Ms Reinholz which was known as “lock-up”.

This 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.

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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. The tribunal heard that Eversheds took this approach to avoid a claim of sex discrimination from Ms Reinholz.

In yesterday’s judgment, Mr Justice Underhill said: “It will be clear from that account that the claimant has suffered a real injustice.

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“By giving Ms Reinholz a notional maximum score, while he was given his actual score, Eversheds gave her an advantage over him which was not based on an assessment of their respective merits; and that advantage is very likely to have made the difference between him keeping and losing his job.”

The judge said lawyers for Eversheds had emphasised the difficulty of any employer in a case like this who risk a claim whichever course they choose.

But he said: “Captious claims by male colleagues who resent the proper protection given to pregnant women and mothers can expect short shrift. But the present case is not of that kind: the disproportionate advantage to Ms Reinholz meant a direct and unfair corresponding disadvantage to the claimant.”

The judge ruled that the original tribunal had got the amount of compensation wrong because it failed to take into account evidence that, had Mr de Belin survived this redundancy exercise, he would probably have been made redundant in a further exercise a few months later.

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The original tribunal heard that Mr de Belin had worked for the firm for about 14 years and earned around £60,000 a year.

An Eversheds spokeswoman said: “The firm stands by the decisions it took with respect to the treatment of women on maternity leave, which it believes is consistent with its obligations under EU and UK law.”

Alan Chalmers, employment partner at legal firm DLA Piper – which was not representing either party – described the ruling as a “landmark decision” which had “wide ramifications” for employers.

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