Paranoid Delusions and Disability

In Sullivan v Bury Street Capital Ltd [2021] EWCA Civ 1694, the Court of Appeal decided that a tribunal had been entitled to find that a claimant, who suffered from paranoid delusions that he was being monitored and followed by a gang of Russian nationals, following a short relationship with a Ukrainian woman, was not disabled within the meaning of EqA 2010.

The judgment serves as a useful reminder of the law relating to recurring conditions, and the requirement that, where an impairment ceases to have a substantial adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, it is to be treated as continuing to have that effect only if that effect is likely to recur.

In this case, the evidence showed that, although the claimant’s delusional beliefs persisted over a four year period, they did not have a substantial adverse effect on his ability to carry out his normal day-to-day activities throughout that period. Indeed, they only had that effect in two discrete episodes of a few months each, one in 2013 and another in 2017. As such, neither episode satisfied the long term condition (12 months or likely to last 12 months). The tribunal had also decided that neither episode was likely to recur.

The judgment is also worth reading for its summary of the principles governing the extent/quality of reasons given by a tribunal: “What is required is adequacy, not perfection. An ET is not sitting an examination.”  See also the excerpts from DPP Law Ltd v Greenberg [2021] EWCA Civ 672.