Eversheds found guilty of sex discrimination against male lawyer

The UK Employment Tribunal has decided in favour of an associate who claimed that Eversheds dismissed him unfairly and discriminated against him on the basis of gender when implementing a redundancy programme. John de Belin was laid off by Eversheds in February of last year, as the firm made a series of redundancies across its UK offices. His complaint centres on a performance-based scoring exercise that was used to determine who would be at risk of redundancy. One of the criteria in the exercise was how quickly lawyers could secure client payment during a designated period. Since one associate was on maternity leave during te designated period, Eversheds decided to award her top marks for securing payment. This was thought prudent in order to any sex discrimination claim from the absent associate. In the result, the associate who was away on maternity leave scored half a mark more than the claimant, John de Belin. De Belin was made redundant, while the female associate was kept on. The Tribunal found in favour of John de Belin, and ordered that Eversheds pay him £123,300. Eversheds plans to appeal the decision.

Eversheds found guilty of sex discrimination against male lawyer thelawyer.com Tue, May 4, 2010