Age Discrimination and a Week's Pay

[Thanks to James Medhurst of Employment Law Advocates for providing this case summary]

The EAT (Wilkie J) has handed down its decision in CIBC v Beck, which is authority for the proposition that a briefing document referring to a "younger" replacement for a person who has been dismissed is capable of reversing the burden of proof that the employee was dismissed on the grounds of his age, where the word "younger" has been retained in the face of advice from HR that it was inappropriate. The fact that the Tribunal also made findings consistent with a non-discriminatory explanation and initially considered that age discrimination was inherently unlikely did not prevent the burden of proof from reversing.

The Tribunal was not obliged to find that the burden of proof had been discharged by the selection of a shortlist in which many of the candidates were older than the Claimant, in circumstances in which the shortlist was produced by a different manager from the person who made the decision to dismiss.

In calculating a week's pay for the purposes of making a protective award, the Tribunal was entitled to exclude a discretionary bonus when the date for considering whether to award the bonus had not yet occurred. The decision was not inconsistent with EU law.