Court to hear appeal on overturning of SNA’s €255,000 award

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by a school special needs assistant against the overturning of a €255,000 damages award to her.

Una Ruffley’s case raises issues of “potential widespread significance” for employees and employers concerning how workplace bullying allegations are dealt with in disciplinary processes, the Supreme Court said.

The €255,000 award was made by the High Court in 2014 to Ms Ruffley, who worked in St Anne's National School, The Curragh, Co Kildare.

She had claimed her school’s conduct of a disciplinary process amounted to “workplace bullying” as defined under the Industrial Relations Act 1990. The relevant Code of Practice in that Act summarises bullying as “repeated, inappropriate behaviour which could reasonably be regarded as undermining the indivudual’s right to dignity at work”.

The High Court found Ms Ruffley’s treatment throughout a disciplinary process was entirely inappropriate within the definition of bullying in the workplace, was persistent on the part of the school principal and resulted in Ms Ruffley suffering psychiatric injury.

Last December, the Court of Appeal, by a two to one majority, granted the school’s appeal against the High Court decision.

While all three judges found Ms Ruffley was treated in a manner contrary to fair procedures and suffered psychiatric injury, two of the judges held the case did not come within the definition of bullying and allowed the appeal.

‘Widespread significance’

In a published determination granting permission to appeal that decision, the Supreme Court, comprising the Chief Justice Susan Denham, Mr Justice Peter Charleton and Ms Justice Iseult O'Malley, said it considered two aspects of the appeal court's decision, where the judges "diverged signficantly" in their assessment, were "of potential, widespread signifiance to employees and employers".

The first aspect was the desirability of clarification of the status of a disciplinary process in relation to a bullying allegation, it said.

In that regard, it would grant leave to appeal on the issue as to whether an unfairly carried out disciplinary process resulting in psychiatric injury is, in itself, capable of being actionable in damages on the basis it amounts to workplace bullying without evidenceof malicious intent on the employer’s part.

The second aspect concerns part of the content of the right to dignity in the workplace, it said. It would allow leave to appeal on the issue whether behaviour not witnessed by other persons in the wrokplace is capable of undermining the dignity of an employee.

In his Court of Appeal judgment allowing the school's appeal, Mr Justice Sean Ryan said, if the High Court decision was allowed stand, it would widen the legal definition of bullying "to all kinds of situations it was never intended to cover".

Dignity

Ms Justice Mary Irvine also said she was not satisfied Ms Ruffley was subjected to inappropriate repeated conduct which had the effect of undermining her dignity in the workplace for over a year.

Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan, dissenting, said the High Court judge correctly found repeated inappropriate behaviour by and on behalf of the school.

Ms Ruffley worked for 14 years at the school, which is exclusively devoted to children with special needs.

Her case arose from an incident on September 14th, 2009, when she was with a pupil in the school’s “sensory room”, used for one-to-one development of a child’s sensory perception. At issue in the case was whether it was normal practice for the door to the room should be locked or just closed as it was generally accepted the sensory programme should be done without interruption.

The principal tried to gain entry three times before Ms Ruffley opened the door which later gave rise to disciplinary moves against her.