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Bullied lawyer set to collect a record £13 million damages
Benedict Moore-Bridger, Evening Standard11.03.08
A leading City lawyer is in line for a record £13 million compensation payout over claims she suffered bullying and sexual discrimination by her colleagues.
Gill Switalski - once named one of the legal world's "Hot 100" - was subjected to 18 months of harassment at the hands of City finance company F&C Asset Management.
The 51-year-old quit her £140,000-ayear job as head of legal affairs following a sustained campaign of bullying, harassment, intimidation sexual discrimination and victimisation.
An employment tribunal has ordered that Mrs Switalski be awarded compensation over her claims that she was undermined, undervalued, bullied and marginalised by her former employer.
The self-confessed workaholic, who has two disabled sons, previously ran her own legal training website and developed multi-million-pound properties. Together with husband Andrew Wright she spent £2 million transforming a Thirties house on the Wentworth Estate in Surrey.
But she has been left unable to read a newspaper and is forced to sleep for several hours a day taking prescription drugs after her ordeal.
Her lawyers estimate the cost of her psychiatric damage, loss of earnings-pension, and diminished career prospects at £13.4 million - which would be Britain's highest ever sex discrimination award.
The previous compensation record for a sex discrimination case is believed to be £6.5 million won by bond trader Allison Schieffelin against Morgan Stanley in 2005.
Two years earlier, two women City lawyers were awarded £6.8 million against the firm Sinclair, Roche and Temperley.
Mrs Switalski has also had to care for her two sons - one of whom has cerebral palsy and the other who has Asperger's syndrome - and sold the family's £3.4 million home in Virginia Water to help pay legal costs.
A central London tribunal heard how the twice-married lawyer's troubles began when a new line manager started at the company which controls assets worth more than £102 billion.
Mrs Switalski wanted to devote more time to her family and had put in flexible hours but line manager Marrack Tomkin began questioning her time out of the office, her holidays and expenses after he was put in charge of the team's budget in 2004. He became "fixated" with Mrs Switalski's working hours, even though she met her targets, and checked up on her through other colleagues.
Mrs Switalski complained she was overlooked for management positions and side-lined in favour of her deputy on a project to buy a hedge fund.
Her lawyers said a male employee, who also had children with special needs, was allowed time off and to work from home.
When Mrs Switalski's mother died in March 2006 and she was forced to cancel a business trip to Boston in the US, she was sent an email demanding her mother's death certificate for the firm's travel insurance, the tribunal was told.
After having surgery later that year, Mrs Switalski attended a meeting about her complaints still carrying a post-operative drain in a plastic bag.
She then contracted the life-threatening infection cellulitis and had two further operations in August 2006. The lawyer took sick leave but never returned to the company, resigning in September last year after lodging her formal complaint.
She was also subsequently diagnosed with depression caused by stress at work and the tribunal last month agreed she was suffering an "adjustment disorder".
F&C and its employees strenuously deny the claims and have lodged an appeal.
Reader views (4)
Employers treat staff who get paid a lot less than her just as badly and get away with it. Hurrah for the judgement hurrah for the Employment Appeal Tribunal hurrah for Switalsi.
- Patrick Coventry, Coventry - UK
I really sympathise with Mrs. Switalski if she has suffered as the result of discrimination and "bullying" at work. But, if she was paid £140,000 and had been given a job worth £300,000, after 14 additional years (assuming she retired at 65), she would have earned £4.2Million. To be paid up-front is worth more than getting income over a period - during which she may have had medical problems or just got fed up with life in the City - so it is hard to understand why an award of £13Mil is being suggested. It makes it harder when military personnel are supposed to put up with a pittance if they are obliged to stop their working lives due to injuries our Government put them in line to incur. I guess it's easier to hit Banks than the tax-payer.
- Chris King, Fleet, Hampshire
Abhorrently greedy woman! Had a male tried to claim compensation for hurt feelings and stress, he would simply be laughed out of court. Given her obscenely large salary and position, I believe her line manager was at complete liberty to question her absences. I suspect her so called depression and stress is very much related to the fact that she was running a website, property developing, and holding down her main job. To blame her colleagues for her apparent psychological problems is unbelievable. I sincerely hope she gets nothing.
- Fanchon, London, UK
When she sold the £3.4m house we all saw it on Channel 4 - Grand Designs programme - this wannabee is searching celebrity. While living in the £3.4m house they bought a plot next door to build a 7000sq ft house on Wentworth!
- Paul Berkshire, Ascot, UK
