£50k for breast cancer sufferer whose bosses accused her of laziness
A CANCER survivor has won a £50,000 legal battle against her former employers after they accused her of not doing a ‘single day’s work’ as she battled the disease.
Eimear Coghlan, 34, was made to work in a ‘hostile and offensive’ environment by her boss Poonam Dhawan-Leach after they clashed over her needing time off for life- saving surgery and chemotherapy.
Miss Coghlan, who documented her struggle with breast cancer in an online blog, was a PA and office manager at The Hideaways Club – a luxury property investment firm in Kensington, west London.
While she was initially treated with sympathy, Miss Coghlan, who is Irish, eventually quit her job and returned to her native Mallow, in Co Cork, after being hounded by her bosses. Colleagues recalled ‘spiteful and aggressive’ treatment of Miss Coghlan, who would be left sobbing, as she underwent her debilitating cancer treatment.
Mrs Leach – described by the tribunal as a ‘ very demanding manager’ – alleged Miss Coghlan had ‘not done a single day’s work’ in the months after her diagnosis.
She said the situation was not sustainable because she did not think her PA would be able to resume normal duties until she completed her treatment.
Miss Coghlan took the firm to the London Central employment tribunal, where a judge found she had suffered disability discrimination and had been the victim of ‘plainly unfavourable treatment’.
The tribunal awarded her £47,700 – £19,000 of which was for ‘injury of feelings’. Miss Coghlan, who now runs a language school in Italy, began working for the firm in September 2013.
She and Mrs Leach had enjoyed a ‘close and amicable’ relationship until the atmosphere soured after Miss Coghlan’s cancer diagnosis in December of the following year.
Email correspondence showed Mrs Leach initially reacted ‘sympathetically and with natural concern’ towards her employee, and discussed arrangements so she could continue working around her treatment.
But the tribunal heard the relationship had become ‘frayed’ by February 2015 and Mrs Leach contacted the firm’s HR consultants for advice. Over the next two months relations worsened as Miss Coghlan’s flexible working arrangements, including a concession that she could work from home if she felt unwell, were ended.
Mrs Leach began demanding doctors’ notes if her PA needed time off, which the tribunal said had ‘violated her dignity’. An ‘inflexible’ arrangement was made that she would have to take sick leave – on reduced pay – for at least half a day if she had a medical appointment, even if she only needed to be out of the office for an hour.
The chief executive emailed the HR consultants saying she was not willing to compromise everything ‘just so I can be kind and sensitive to one individual who is very unfortunately going through an extremely difficult personal health situation’.
Miss Coghlan eventually signed off with stress, and resigned in September 2015. Judge David Pearl concluded that Mrs Leach ‘went too far’. He said: ‘This was unwanted conduct related to her disability and it had the effect of creating a hostile, humiliating and offensive environment.’
The Hideaways Club contested all of Miss Coghlan’s claims and their lawyers argued that many of the decisions taken were made out of concern for her.
‘Spiteful and aggressive’