Stress, Foresee-ability & Discrimination Claims

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There is an implied term in all employment contracts that the employer must take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of employees. Occasionally the amount of stress an employee is exposed to may result in him becoming ill.

Ordinarily, in order for an employer to take steps to safeguard an employee from impending harm to health arising from stress at work, the indications should be plain enough for any reasonable employer to realise that he should do something about it. Whether this kind of harm to a particular employee was reasonably foreseeable depends upon what the employer knows, or ought reasonably to know, about the individual employee concerned.

However in Essa v. Laing Ltd [2003] the EAT held that the applicant was entitled to compensation under the Race Relations Act in respect of loss which resulted from the depression he suffered as a result of an incident of racial abuse, even though that the loss was not reasonably foreseeable.

An Applicant who has been the victim of unlawful race discrimination is entitled to compensation where he can show a direct causal link between the act of discrimination and the loss. Compensation is not limited to cases of reasonably foreseeable harm. The statutory tort created by the Race Relations Act is designed to protect persons from race discrimination and consequent injury, including personal injury such as psychiatric damage.