Workplace Sexual Harassment – You Don’t Have to Put Up With It!

Those who suffer sexual harassment at work have absolutely no reason to put up with it and should contact an employment lawyer without delay. In a case on point, a young woman who was showered with offensive WhatsApp messages by her boss was awarded substantial compensation.

Over a period…

Jun 30, 2022

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Those who suffer sexual harassment at work have absolutely no reason to put up with it and should contact an employment lawyer without delay. In a case on point, a young woman who was showered with offensive WhatsApp messages by her boss was awarded substantial compensation.

Over a period of more than two years, the administrative assistant’s boss sent her a persistent stream of extremely distasteful, crude and, in many cases, shockingly racist messages. About 50 of them were memes of a sexual nature. Some of them were simply bad, misogynistic jokes whilst others included pornographic images.

Upholding her sexual harassment and victimisation claims, an Employment Tribunal found it extraordinary that a director and owner of a company would send such unwanted messages to an employee. She did not find them remotely funny and felt embarrassed and humiliated by their content. Almost any female employee would have been likely to feel the same way in the circumstances.

Her boss had also made a comment about her removing her clothes and a sexually suggestive remark when she bent down to pick up a pen. When she complained, he sent her a text message containing a veiled threat to report her allegedly undeclared cash income to the tax authorities. Together with interest, her total compensation award for injury to her feelings came to £19,000.

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Service Charges Dispute Focuses on Report of ‘Intolerable’ Fire Risk

Tenants are only obliged to pay service charges that have been reasonably incurred. That principle was the focus of a guideline case concerning two apartment blocks which, according to an expert report, posed an intolerable fire risk. Previous fire inspections of the blocks had uncovered no serious problems so that the report, which found combustible materials in their external walls, came as a bolt from the blue. The landlord’s response was to place a 24-hour waking watch on the blocks as an…