10 July 2008
In brief
A recent House of Lords’ judgment will make it harder for disabled employees to succeed in bringing disability-related discrimination claims, says Allen & Overy lawyer Lucy Twomey. Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Lewisham v Malcolm [2008] UKHL 43, [2008] All ER (D) 342 (Jun) establishes the need for discriminators to possess knowledge of the complainant’s disability before incurring liability. Twomey says the case has overturned the test for identifying an appropriate comparator in disability-related discrimination cases which was established almost a decade ago in the Court of Appeal decision in Clark v Novacold Ltd [1999] IRLR 318.
