7:21 am, July 15, 2024
The owner of Cawdor Cars has been ordered to pay more than £26,000 to a disabled ex-employee after he coughed in her face on purpose during the pandemic.
The new and used car dealership business, which has six showrooms across Ceridigion and Carmarthenshire, also runs the Datblygau Davies Developments property rental outfit, where the female staff member – named in tribunal documents as Mrs D Philpott – was a property manager.
She took David Kevin Lewis Davies – known better as Kevin Davies – and Cawdor Cars to an employment tribunal, which ruled that there had been constructive unfair dismissal as well as discrimination that was related to her disability, reported Wales Online.
Mrs Philpott, who worked for Cawdor Cars from 2017 to 2020, suffers from psoriatic arthritis, and the Wrexham tribunal was told that her autoimmune condition made her especially vulnerable during the pandemic.
The hearing was told that the incident happened on March 17. 2020, when social distancing was being recommended.
Mrs Philpott had asked her colleagues to keep a safe distance from her because of her disability, but Davies ‘coughed in her direction deliberately and loudly, commenting that she was being ridiculous’ while going past her in a corridor, said employment judge Tobias Vincent Ryan.
Wales Online reported the judge as saying that although Mrs Philpott had found working with Davies ‘difficult’ and believed that his behaviour had caused her predecessor to leave, she had felt ‘ready and able for it’ until what happened that day.
The judge also said that some staff members had labelled Davies’s management style ‘brusque’ and ‘interfering’, with Davies often using ‘crude language’.
The tribunal found that the 62-year-old ‘often used insulting language, referring to anyone who irritated him or caused him difficulties, and in particular tenants, as “bitch” and “bastard”’.
The judge said Davies had intended to ‘ridicule and intimidate’ Mrs Philpott, adding that Davies’s ‘gross behaviour’ was particularly ‘appalling’ since it was aimed at a vulnerable person who had requested respectful social distancing.
The tribunal also found that Cawdor Cars managers overheard the loud coughing and had been aware of the incident.
Some of the witnesses acted ‘defensively and as not being wholly straightforward, particularly with some unconvincing denials’, with one seen ‘smirking or laughing’ while they gave their evidence, in spite of Mrs Philpott’s ‘obvious distress’, said the judge.
Wales Online reported that in 2019 Davies had praised Mrs Philpott for having a ‘good handle’ on her work and had said he had great trust in her. However, the judge ruled that Cawdor Cars ‘engineered her exit’ in June 2020.
Mrs Philpott complained ‘vehemently’ about what had happened and quit, which led the judge to say in his ruling: ‘She resigned at least in part because she was victimised; this was a major and significant factor in her decision.
‘She felt that she was being eased out partly because of her complaints. She was correct.’
He said that Mrs Philpott must be paid £26,438.84, which included £18,000 damages from Cawdor Cars for injury to feelings.
The company – whose registered office is in Newcastle Emlyn – and Davies were ordered to pay her £3,841.94 for unfair dismissal plus £4,596.90 interest.
Datblygau Davies Developments’ portfolio includes top-end hotels as well as assorted housing developments.
Main image, via Google Street View, shows the Wrexham tribunal building
