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A British woman is in the spotlight after she filed a lawsuit related to a missing “farewell card.” It was found that Karen Conaghan, who served as a business liaison lead with International Airlines Group (IAG), did not receive a farewell card, and in turn, she sued her former employer, The Guardian reported.
In her lawsuit, Karen Conaghan alleged that the absence of a leaving card was a “failure to acknowledge her existence,” which equated to a breach of equality law. The IAG, the parent company of British Airways, laid off Karen Conaghan in 2021.
Let’s have a look at how the events unfolded.
A former colleague of Karen Conaghan, who began working for IAG in 2019, informed the judge of the employment tribunal hearing the case that a farewell card had been bought. However, it was discovered that the card had been signed only by three people.
According to the report, Karen Conaghan’s colleagues decided against presenting the card citing the miniscule number of people who bothered to sign it. They felt it would be insulting to gift such a card on a special occasion. Consequently, the woman lost the distinctive case she had filed against the company.
“He believed it would have been more insulting to give her the card than not to give her a card at all,” The Guardian quoted Judge Palmer as saying. Furthermore, the investigation revealed that the petitioner brought 40 complaints against the company for sexual harassment, victimisation and unfair dismissal, all of which were dismissed by the court.
Subsequently, Judge Kevin Palmer decreed that Karen Conaghan frequently mistook “normal workplace interactions” for harassment and had thus adopted a “conspiracy-theory mentality.” Another revelation pointed to Karen Conaghan’s nonchalant behaviour; despite the fact that all employees were expected to stay within a two-hour drive from the office in Heathrow, the woman moved to North Yorkshire’s Richmond in September 2021.
After a number of revelations pointed to complainants’ misconduct, the court ruled that many acts cited in the claim “either did not happen or, if they did happen, they were innocuous interactions in the normal course of employment.”