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Disability discrimination: Evidence of how "disabled" employees perform at work can affect their credibility

This report relates to 1 case(s)

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    Law Hospital NHS Trust v Rush [2001] IRLR 611 CS (2 other reports)

    • Devil in the detail

      Date:
      1 March 2002

      The complexities of the Disability Discrimination Act make it easy to slip up in practice. There are areas in which occupational health and personnel practitioners really need to be on their toes

    • Work activities to be taken into account

      Date:
      1 September 2001

      In Law Hospital NHS Trust v Rush the Court of Session has ruled that evidence of the nature of an applicant's duties at work, and the way in which they are performed can be relevant to whether they meet the statutory definition of a disabled person.

On the basis of the evidence led before an employment tribunal, and the tribunal's assessment of the applicant's credibility, its decision that she had a disability for the purposes of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 was plainly right, holds the Inner House, Court of Session in Law Hospital NHS Trust v Rush 13.6.01 Inner House, Court of Session. But it was not correct to say, as a matter of principle, that evidence as to the duties performed by the applicant at work, and the way in which she performed them, particularly if they included "normal day-to-day activities", could not be relevant to the tribunal's assessment of her credibility. Whether any such evidence is, in fact, relevant must depend on the circumstances of each case.