UK Times Online – August 1^st 2006

 (link to BBC web site interview)

By Adam Fresco  - United kingdom

A City secretary who claimed she worked in the "department from hell" at a German bank has won £800,000 after a campaign of harassment that included a colleague blowing raspberries at her.

Helen Green, 36, said that she had been driven to the point of a mental breakdown at Deutsche Bank in London, where teasing went beyond office banter. She told a High Court judge: "This was not playful, it was malicious, it was vicious."

Miss Green, who worked in the firm’s secretarial division between October 1997 and October 2001, said that she suffered psychiatric injury because of "offensive, abusive, intimidating, denigrating, bullying, humiliating, patronising, infantile and insulting words and behaviour" by four women, including Daniella Dolbear, an administrator.

Nine weeks into her new job, she was working on her own in an office when the four walked in and Miss Dolbear - with her hand over her nose - said: "What’s that stink over there?"

"Daniella was shouting and saying you stink and that sort of loud behaviour and laughing in my face and blowing raspberries," said Miss Green, from Docklands, east London.

"There was one time when I was walking from my desk over to the stationery cupboard and she was blowing raspberries with every step I made - it wasn’t funny."

Mr Justice Owen, at London’s High Court, said that the behaviour, which amounted to "a deliberate and concerted campaign of bullying within the ordinary meaning of that term", was a long-standing problem in the department but the bank's management was "weak and ineffectual". 

He awarded her £35,000 for pain and suffering, £25,000 in respect of her disadvantage on the labour market, £128,000 for past loss of earnings and about £640,000 for future loss of earnings including pension. The bank will also have to pay her legal costs.

Miss Green, who was on a £45,000 salary, denied that she had "talked down" to the women, and said that she reached the point where she would just sit at her desk and cry silently.

She suffered panic attacks on her way to work and had a nervous breakdown in November 2000. She resumed full-time work the following April but had a relapse in October 2001. She never returned, although her job was kept open until September 2003.

Miss Green argued that the bank should have stopped the women from harassing her. She sued DB Group Services (UK) Ltd for compensation to cover her lost earnings and to pay for her medical treatment.

Robert Glancy, QC, told the judge: "Bullying and harassment which is carried on in the manner described in this case clearly carries a plain and clear risk of psychological injury and clearly also triggers a duty to take steps to do something about it. Any reasonable employer would do so once it knew or ought to have known of such conduct.

"The bullying and harassment of Ms Green should be seen in this case as the continuation of a lengthy and ongoing pattern of behaviour, about which the defendant knew perfectly well, or at least, ought to have known. It was quite inexcusable, in the light of this history, not to take firm and decisive action to stamp out this sort of behaviour before, let alone during, Ms Green’s employment."

Deutsche Bank, which denied breach of statutory duty or that she was bullied, relied on her pre-existing vulnerability to mental illness.

In a statement after the hearing the bank said that they respected the judgement of the court but were considering appealing against it.

A senior source at the bank told Times Online that the claims were investigated at the time but no disciplinary action was taken against anyone.

The source said: "The judgment of the court is respected, but we would interpret the evidence in a different way, hence no disciplinary action. We investigated the claims at the time and no action was taken against any individual at the bank at won’t be now."

Miss Green said she was delighted at the ruling. She is now training for an academic career. She said: "This is the end of a long and painful battle. Instead of acknowledging the problem, the bank added to my anguish by conducting this litigation in an unnecessarily obstructive and hostile manner.

"In fighting my case I have become more aware of what a big problem bullying is for the City. My case was not an isolated one. At the trial the court heard evidence about other victims.

"Not only does Deutsche Bank have to put its house in order, but all City businesses will have to do more than pay lip-service to this hidden menace.

"Thankfully I am much better now, but what happened destroyed what I had hoped would be a long and successful career in the City."

Naomi Branston, an employment specialist at Taylor Wessing, said that the £640,000 award for loss of future earnings was not actually that large, since Ms Green was only 36 and was earning £100,000 a year.

"Inevitably there will be people who see the headlines and ask their lawyers to do the same for them, but the burden of evidence in these cases is very high and bringing such a case is in itself a very stressful thing to do so I don't expect a flood of claims resulting from this," said Ms Branston.

Susan Gordon, an employment lawyer at Nabbaro Nathanson, said that the case was unusual and significant because it was a High Court claim for damages for personal injury, as opposed to a claim in the employment tribunal for unfair dismissal or discrimination.

"Following a Court of Appeal decision in 2002, the bar for employees bringing these sorts of claims has been pretty high," said Ms Gordon.

"It must have been pretty serious bullying or a sustained campaign of harassment - and Deutsche Bank must have failed to take reasonable steps to protect her - for Helen Green to have won. The level of damages would reflect both her physical injury and her likely loss of earnings as a result."

The key case for personal injury claims for stress at work is Sutherland v Hatton, where the Court of Appeal held that unless the employer knows of a particular problem or vulnerability, it is usually entitled to assume that the employee can withstand the normal job pressures.

Many cases therefore fail because the courts have held that the psychiatric injury was not foreseeable by the employer. Sunita Knight-Webb of Knight-Webb solicitors said that in the case of Helen Green, the fact that she had already had a nervous breakdown and had then returned to work would have meant that Deutsche Bank would have known she had a particular vulnerability.

Big payouts

·  A lawyer for Merrill Lynch received £1m after accusing colleagues of sexual harassment. Elizabeth Weston, 30, claims a male colleague made lewd comments about her body after a Christmas party.

·  Steven Horkulak won nearly £1 million in compensation for months of bullying by his boss at broker Cantor Fitzgerald in 2003. Mr Horkulak said he had been screamed at, physically menaced and publicly humiliated.

·  Laurent Weinberger, who worked at Tullett & Tokyo Liberty, received more than £100,000 for being made to wear Nazi uniform as a punishment and months of anti-Semitic abuse. His grandmother had died at Auschwitz.

·  "Had cancer, been a pain, now pregnant,' was how one manager at Schroder Securities described drinks industry analyst Julie Bower. She won £1.4 million for being forced out of her job in 2001.

·  Six women have launched a $1.4 billion (£793 million) discrimination lawsuit against Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, believed to be the biggest of its kind.