A HIGH Court judge has awarded €88,000 in damages to a teacher against the board of management of Ballinteer Community School arising from “deliberate and conscious” bullying and harassment of her by the school principal. At one stage he hired a private investigator to follow her.
Dr Austin Corcoran, principal of the school, behaved “like an offended tyrant” towards the home-school liaison co-ordinator Bridget Sweeney in his dealings with her after March 2007, Mr Justice Daniel Herbert said.
Dr Corcoran’s conduct was not excused by the fact Ms Sweeney’s behaviour during this period, in general and in particular towards Dr Corcoran, was “inappropriate and should not have been tolerated by the board of management”.
Ms Sweeney (56), a separated mother of two, Beaver Row, Donnybrook, Dublin, had claimed she had to retire in 2009 from her €70,000 a year post on a €32,000 per annum pension due to illness suffered as a result of various actions of Dr Corcorcan. She also claimed she was overlooked for a post of responsibility or promotion for which she was qualified.
The board denied her claims. The court heard an inquiry carried out by a barrister into earlier complaints of bullying of her by Dr Corcoran in incidents in 2005 and 2006 had not upheld those complaints. Those earlier complaints were not before the court which ruled on matters from 2007 on.
The judge said Ms Sweeney had returned to work in March 2007, after 209 days certified sick leave due to work-related stress, with a plan to avoid contact with Dr Corcoran. Where that was not possible, she would stand up to him and insist communication between them happen in the presence of someone acceptable to her.
Ms Sweeney had not communicated with the principal or deputy principal. While from October 13th, 2007, no one knew what she was doing in her working day, he was satisfied she was carrying out her duties as home-school liaison co-ordinator with the dedication she always had.
The evidence established, on the balance of probabilities, Ms Sweeney suffered a psychiatric illness, clinical depression, between February 2008 and June 2010, arising from continuous bullying by Dr Corcoran from March 28th, 2007, he ruled.
This mental injury resulting from the bullying was reasonably foreseeable by Dr Corcoran and the board and there was a breach of the employer’s direct duty of care to Ms Sweeney, he said.
He accepted evidence Ms Sweeney had recovered, while suffering anxiety at times, and said there was nothing which should inhibit her resuming work and working with Dr Corcoran as professional colleagues.
The evidence established it was “quite usual” for some teachers in large schools not to be on speaking terms with other, he noted.
He also did not believe the actions of Dr Corcoran amounted to “wilful and conscious” wrongdoing and would not award exemplary damages However, because the actions involved oppressive conduct by Dr Corcoran, he was including €5,000 aggravated damages in the total award of €88,000.
Dr Corcoran’s decision to engage a private investigator for covert surveillance of Ms Sweeney during school hours over four days in February 2008 amounted to “most serious harassment”, he said.
Dr Corcoran, the judge noted, hired the investigator after making genuine attempts to have the school and the Department of Education inspectorate take action arising from his reasonable concerns about his “total lack of information” about where Ms Sweeney was and what she was doing in her capacity as homeschool liaison co-ordinator.
Dr Corcoran’s efforts to involve the inspectorate had no success and the response of the board was “too little, too late”.
The judge upheld some of the complaints made by Ms Sweeney about the conduct of Dr Corcoran and dismissed others.
On her complaints about being followed by two investigators in a car, the judge said, while Ms Sweeney was well capable of asserting what she considered to be her rights, she was “still a woman” and the experience of being followed about in her working day by a car with two men inside must have been “truly terrifying”.
Despite being fully aware of Ms Sweeney’s “long and totally uncharacteristic” absences from work in 2005, 2006 and 2007 due to work-related stress, Dr Corcoran arranged for her to be “stalked” by an investigator when he knew, or should have known, she was very vulnerable to some form of mental breakdown.
While the board did not authorise Dr Corcoran’s actions, it was vicariously liable for wrongful acts committed by him in the course of his employment, the judge added.
The board owed Ms Sweeney a direct duty of care as her employer, under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, to take reasonable care to prevent her suffering mental injury in the workplace as a result of being bullied by other employees if they knew, or should have known, that was occurring.
From March 2007, the board should have known Ms Sweeney was claiming she was being bullied by Dr Corcoran and should reasonably have foreseen a risk she would suffer mental illness if the situation was permitted to continue.
Despite this, the board took no reasonable or proper steps to address the situation. While there might be a reasonable basis for its view, its code of procedures was slow and complex and lawyers had turned the situation into “a legal morass”, this was not a reasonable ground for taking no action at all for 10 months, he said.
