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Fired pregnant Leeds doctor wins £4.5 million
Dr Eva Michalak. PIC: Ross Parry
A Leeds doctor has won more than £4.5 million in damages from a hospital trust which sacked her unfairly after she fell pregnant.
Obstetrician Dr Eva Michalak, left, has been handed the payout by a tribunal panel after winning her sex and race discrimination case against Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.
She had sued for £9m.
The Polish-born 53-year-old’s ordeal lasted five years, she became suicidal and suffered from chronic post traumatic stress.
She was suspended from her £90,000 consultant physician job at Pontefract General Infirmary after her ordeal began in 2003 and was later fired.
An industrial tribunal found the Trust had no valid reason to sack Dr Michalak and fired her “for a reason that related to the claimant’s pregnancy”. She was seven months pregnant when the campaign against her started.
Secret meetings were held as part of a “discriminatory plan” to “get rid of her”, the panel found, and her employers’ behaviour was “unjustified”.
The tribunal panel awarded Dr Michalak £7,180 for unfair dismissal. It also ordered the Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, and co-respondents Dr David Dawson, Dr Colin White and Mrs Diane Nicholls, to jointly pay £4,452,206.60 compensation for unlawful sex and race discrimination.
The hospital suspended her, claiming she was bullying junior doctors and office staff.
But the panel found Dr Michalak’s suspension was “lengthy and wholly unauthorised” and the judges added: “We are positively outraged at the way this employer has behaved.
“The claimant has lost her role and status as a hospital consultant. She is never going to return to work as a doctor, a profession which she, in common with both of her parents, cherished together with all the status that brings with it.
“In our view, simply undergoing those experiences with all the unpleasantness, anxiety, worry and fear that it caused the claimant amply justify an award for injury to feelings.”
As part of her payout, Dr Michalak, who was living in Leeds at the time, was granted £30,000 for injury to feelings, £56,000 for psychiatric damage, £168,234 for past loss of earnings, £991,802 for future loss of earnings, £666,260 for loss of pension and £50,000 for medical treatment.
The Trust has already made interim payments of £300,000.
The tribunal had earlier heard how Dr Michalak’s husband, fellow doctor Julian DeHavilland, had put his life and career on hold to care for her.
He turned down a lucrative job in Singapore and accepted one in London so he could spend time with his ill wife and young son.
Dr Michalak endured five years of harassment and false allegations from senior staff before being dismissed from her job at Pontefract Hospital in July 2008, the tribunal heard.
The remedy employment tribunal had heard her life was made a “living hell” by her bosses after she left work in 2003 to have her son.
Secret meetings were held, starting when she was seven months pregnant, in which senior members of staff agreed to find cause to end her employment while appearing to support her.
She was left ill, unable to work and relied on support from her family in Poland as her health deteriorated after the suspension.
Julia Squire, chief executive at The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said last night: “We have only just received the judge’s decision on the compensation and this is based on very complex and lengthy calculations.
“We will need time to carefully consider these. Once we have considered the outcome we will then make a statement.”
Dr Michalak said earlier after winning the initial case: “I suffered years of psychological abuse. They basically hounded me because I had a baby. They destroyed my life, my health and my career.
“The last seven years have been a living hell.”
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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