Australian wins racial discrimination case
Judge rules in favour of businessman who claimed his former wife treated him as an ‘inferior race’
AN AUSTRALIAN businessman has been awarded a payout of more than £100,000 after winning a racial discrimination case against his British wife who said she hated his country’s “mentality”.
Duncan Bendall took his wife, Fiona, and their company The Female Social Network (TFSN), to an employment tribunal claiming he was discriminated against because he is a man and because of his nationality.
He also claimed unfair dismissal over his ousting from the firm after the breakdown of their marriage.
An employment judge awarded him more than £100,000 for race discrimination and unfair dismissal, but rejected his claims he was fired due to his gender.
The tribunal heard Mr Bendall received an email from his wife three months before he was sacked in August last year in which she said: “I hate Australian mentality and you have it [in] droves just sh--…and DO NOT say you are a founder in MY business MY efforts ever again You Leech – you don’t even believe in women or have ever stuck your neck out.”
Mr Bendall, 47, told the tribunal his wife “kept treating Australia as an inferior race” despite the couple living there for 15 years.
He told the hearing: “It just made me feel small and like she was putting me down. It seemed she was only saying all this because now she was back in England. The board had clearly chosen to back an English female and remove an Australian male.”
The tribunal heard Mr Bendall and his 42-year-old ex-wife set up a company called Bendalls in Australia in 2004, before setting up TFSN in 2016.
It became a global company and the couple were pictured with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, at the UK launch last June. Mrs Bendall had been running the London operation before her husband joined her in the UK around April last year.
But Mr Bendall said as their marriage broke down, he was harassed and victimised by his wife and the board.
He said it began when the board forced through a shift in the share holdings, from 50/50 to 51/49 in favour of Mrs Bendall. He alleged this was so his wife could say the company was female-owned to boost investment as a feminist company. He then found he had been locked out of the company bank accounts and told he was no longer a director of the firm, without any indication of why this was happening, he said.
Mr Bendall told the tribunal: “Fiona was running around London and New York basically saying she was a majority-owned female business and it was believed the optics were better to have a female-led business and Fiona told them [the board] I would be compliant as long as the investment comes in.” Mr Bendall was dismissed in August. The court heard the company had a valuation of £170million before it went into voluntary liquidation this January with around £2million in the bank and a long client list.
Neither Mrs Bendall nor a company representative attended the hearing, but in a witness statement, they denied the allegations against them.
The statement said: “The claimant was behaving increasingly erratic and abusive towards Mrs Bendall. He bombarded [her] with text messages, emails and voice messages knowing that his actions would provoke her into responding angrily.”
The judge found that the claimant had been discriminated on the basis he was Australian in relation to one email in particular, but ruled there was no sex discrimination.
Judge David Khan said: “I do find that statement in relation to ‘Australian mentality’ is self-evidently related to nationality and I find it was unwanted and I accept Mrs Bendall harassed you because of your race.”
Judge Khan awarded Mr Bendall a total of £102,954.86, including £88,444 for loss of earnings, a basic award of £4,000 and £2,000 for “injury to feelings” for the harassment.