Canary Wharf Management Ltd v Edebi

EAT: Elias J (President): 3 March 2006

In June and July 2004 the claimant, who suffered from asthma, raised a written grievance with his employers that his exposure to traffic fumes in the course of his employment had caused an asthma attack, and he made reference to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. On 25 March 2005 the claimant wrote a letter of resignation, referring to his previous complaint and raising a number of specific complaints, including the effect of his working conditions on his health, but making no reference to the 1995 Act or to his asthma. The claimant presented claims of constructive unfair dismissal and disability discrimination to an employment tribunal, and in their response the employers contended that he had not raised a grievance as required by paragraph 6 of Schedule 2 to the Employment Act 2002. At the employment tribunal it was conceded that a grievance had been raised in relation to the unfair dismissal claim, and the chairman decided that, while the claimant could not link the letters of complaint written in 2004 to the letter of 25 March 2005, the latter in itself raised a grievance, as defined by regulation 2 of the Employment Act 2002 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations 2004, in relation to his disability discrimination complaint and she accepted the claim.

The employers appealed.

ELIAS J (PRESIDENT) held:
To satisfy the relevant provisions of the Employment Act 2002 the grievance relied on had to be extant, and, if it could no longer properly be said to be outstanding, it was necessary for the employee to raise the complaint again in written form, though earlier communications might be part of the context in which a later statement had been written. In relation to the content of the grievance, the objectives of the Act could be met if the employer, on a fair reading of the statement and having regard to the particular context in which it was made, could be expected to appreciate that the relevant complaint was being raised. While the claimant's letter of 25 March 2005 identified specific complaints about his working conditions and their impact on his health, it could not be linked to the previous letters, to the details of which it made no specific reference, since it would be unreasonable to anticipate that the employers would have those details in mind, given the extensive timescale. The references to the claimant's health problems in the later letter did not raise, even in a non-technical and unsophisticated way, an issue which the employers could reasonably understand to have arisen under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and, accordingly, there was no jurisdiction to hear the claim.

The appeal was allowed.

Appearances: Adam Solomon (DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary UK) for the employers; Sheila Aly (Rae & Co) for the claimant.