The Employment Appeal Tribunal has cut a tribunal’s £10,000 award for injury to feeling by 80% after describing the compensation as ‘perverse’.

Caitlin Graham, who was a planner for haulage firm Eddie Stobart Limited from July 2021, made a claim to the employment tribunal in July 2022. She claimed she had been unfairly dismissed on the basis that an alternative role which constituted a suitable vacancy should have been given to her in priority to others who were not on maternity leave.

After a four-day hearing the tribunal found Graham had not been unfairly dismissed but upheld Graham’s complaints of detrimental treatment and pregnancy/maternity discrimination. Finding the company ‘failed to take adequate steps to deal with her grievance’, it awarded her £10,000 for injury to her feelings. Eddie Stobart Limited appealed the award.

In Eddie Stobart v Caitlin Graham, Judge Barry Clarke found the ET’s £10,000 award for injury to feelings ‘manifestly excessive and therefore perverse’. ‘This is a case where there was limited evidence before the ET of the extent of the claimant’s injury,’ the judge said. ‘There was no finding that the injury endured beyond the immediate experience of the detriment.’

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Allowing the appeal, the judge substitued a £2,000 award for the £10,000. He said the ET ‘erred in law by providing inadequate reasons for its decision to award the claimant £10,000’.

‘I would have considered a lower sum but I have settled upon £2,000, doing the best I can, because – like the ET – I am prepared to infer some additional injury arising from the fact that the claimant was chasing up her grievance at a time when she should have been enjoying her maternity leave.’

He added that the ET ‘wrongly’ failed to consider interest and did not award it. The judge applied interest of £169 in addition to the £2,000 compensation.