Shropshire employers warned about obese employee disability issues

TELFORD, U.K. - May 22, 2013 - PRLog -- Telford, Shropshire, UK: John Mehtam, a solicitor at Martin Kaye LLP, has been speaking about an Employment Appeal Tribunal’s ruling that obesity is not a disability.

The ruling followed a claim made by an employee who weighed nearly 22 stone and suffered from a whole host of medical problems including asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety and depression.

The employee in question agreed to a health check. This concluded that, despite his symptoms, he had no underlying medical condition that would have caused his problems. The employee disagreed with the assessment and made a claim for disability discrimination, which was turned down at an employment tribunal.

He refused to accept this decision and took his case to an employment appeal tribunal which overturned the ruling and said he was disabled, even though his symptoms all appeared to have been caused by his weight. The tribunal stopped short though of defining obesity as a disability in its own right. However, they did say that someone who was overweight may be more likely to be considered to be disabled by a tribunal.

Mr Mehtam, employment law specialist at the Telford based law firm, said that the ruling was effectively a warning to overweight employees who are struggling to carry out their job effectively that they do not have the automatic right to claim their weight is a disability, but employers need to hand such situations very carefully as “if the employee’s weight is causing serious health issues, it could be that a tribunal would decide they did have the right to claim disability discrimination”.

Mr Mehtam noted that “the best way forward if you face a claim like this, is to always ask a medical specialist if your employee’s symptoms would improve if they lost some weight. Of course bringing up a tricky issue like an employee’s weight is difficult enough at the best of times, but if they go on to claim it’s a disability then things become even more uncomfortable.”

He warned employers to “tread very carefully as this topic is a minefield and can be a legal nightmare if a case does actually go before a tribunal. It’s vital to take professional advice at the earliest opportunity as such cases are not clear cut and given the sensitive nature of the subject, they can be awkward to handle before, during and after the hearing itself.”

For more information on employment law, visit the Martin Kaye website http://www.martinkaye.co.uk/for-business/employment/emplo...