Council MD did not lie about health in £1m claim, says High Court

Christine Laird hit the headlines earlier this year when she was sued by her former employer Cheltenham Borough Council for nearly £1m in a claim that she had misled it in her job application. Laird was the managing director of the Council.

The High Court has said that she did not deliberately mislead the Council in answering a medical questionnaire, even though she made no mention of previous depressive episodes.

Laird's time at the Council was marked by a series of increasingly bitter disputes with councillors, staff and unions and she spent much of her tenure off sick with stress. Unions claimed she bullied staff and the Council leader told a colleague that her behaviour had the Council "at breaking point".

The High Court said that Laird did not directly lie, and that the questions asked by the Council were capable of being answered in different ways. Laird's answers were not untruthful, it said.

The Council had asked 'do you normally enjoy good health', to which Laird had answered 'yes'. "When depressed she did not enjoy good health. When not depressed, she did. But she was only depressed for limited periods prior to January 2002 and this was not her 'normal' state of health," said the ruling. "A reasonable person in Mrs Laird's position would regard herself as normally enjoying good health. This was the or at least a correct answer."

Laird answered 'no' to the question 'do you have a physical or mental impairment?', which the Court also said was a correct answer. "She did not have an impairment in the technical sense – i.e. under the Mental Health Act or the [Disability Discrimination Act]," it said. "She had a vulnerability to episodes of depressive disorder but she did not have an ongoing depressive disorder…this was the or at least a correct answer."

Laird, who was taking anti-depressant medicine, also declared that she had no ongoing medical condition which would affect her employment.

"Medically, whether Mrs Laird had an ongoing medical condition is a difficult question," said the ruling. "She had a vulnerability to depression but not one that was manifesting itself at that time. The vulnerability was ongoing but not the depression."

"It is standard practice to go on taking anti-depressants for a considerable period after there has been a period of depression. It is not in itself indicative of any ongoing problem," said the judgment. "This was the or at least a correct answer."

The Court found that regardless of her actual condition, Laird's assessment of her health was honest. "For this purpose what matters is Mrs Laird's understanding of her medical condition rather than her actual condition. Her understanding was that she had suffered attacks of anxiety and stress due to specific events, but not that she had suffered or was suffering from a depressive disorder," said the ruling.

The Court said that Laird had not filled out the questionnaire fraudulently, nor had she wilfully withheld important information.

"Given the ambiguity of the questions asked and Mrs Laird's reasonable understanding of her medical history, as I have found it to be, it was not negligent of her to answer the questions as she did," said Mr Justice Hamblen in his ruling.

Laird had argued that the offer of a job was unconditional, and so the medical report was irrelevant. The Court rejected that and found that the job offer was conditional on her medical fitness, but that she had filled in the questionnaire honestly and without fraud or negligence, so the Council's claim failed.

The Court found that if Laird had disclosed her medical history she probably would not have been offered the job, because she was offered it after winning a Council vote of just 18 votes to 17.

Simon Horsfield is an employment law expert at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM. He said that employers should be careful about how they deal with information about a potential employee's medical history.

"The reality is that many employers will not offer a job to an applicant with a poor sickness record, but this may inadvertently expose the employer to claims under the Disability Discrimination Act if the reason for the sickness absence relates to a person's disability: an employer will discriminate against a job applicant if he refuses to offer him employment because he is suffering from a disability," he said.

"An employer must consider whether to make reasonable adjustments for a disabled job applicant, both to the interview process and to the terms of any job offer.  This possible exposure highlights the need for recruitment managers to be trained on this area of the law," said Horsfield.

The Court, though, said that in this case the facts meant that a DDA claim by Laird would have been unlikely. It said that if Laird had been denied the job on the grounds of her past depression she would not have been able to make a claim for discrimination under the DDA because by her own evidence she was not disabled at the time of applying for the job.

"It was common ground that she was not 'disabled' at that time and therefore that there would have been no breach of duty," the Court ruled.

Horsfield said that this case underlines the care that should be taken by employers over the seeking of sensitive information such as medical details.

"In view of the criticism levelled at the Council's questionnaire by the judge in this case, employers would do well to review such forms to ensure that they are worded with clarity and precision," he said. "If an employer asks for details about a previous illness, the focus of the questions should be on whether the applicant is still suffering from the illness; whether any adjustments are required to be made to the interview process; and whether the job applicant would require any adjustments to be made to any physical feature of the employer's premises or any other provision, criterion or practice applied by the employer to remove any disadvantage suffered by the job applicant as a result of their illness," said Horsfield.