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Rearing its ugly head

Victoria von Wachter analyses the complex principles of discrimination

The latest cases involving harassment on grounds of an illegal reason have come to court. The problem here is how loose must the connection be between the insult and the victim, before the thread of causation is broken.

The majority of the discrimination statutes or statutory instruments have provision for the outlawing of discrimination or harassment “on grounds of” whatever the prohibited reason is. The exception is disability which makes it unlawful to harass an individual “for a reason that relates to the disabled person’s disability”.

Harassment is defined as: “Unwanted conduct that has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the victim.” This is subject to a test of reasonableness but taking into account the perception of the victim. The judiciary has been exercised for some time on the extent to which “on grounds of” can be stretched to accommodate the cases that have been

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NEWS
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
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