The High Court has allowed discovery in part in a former employee’s claim that activities in his work environment caused psychiatric injury for which Abbott Ireland was legally responsible.
In a ruling delivered on 15 March 2021, Mr Justice Alexander Owens considered 15 categories of documents sought by the plaintiff. He said discovery had to be relevant to issues in the case, defined with sufficient particularity and proportionate to what was genuinely needed to resolve the dispute or save costs.
The court rejected one request as unduly broad and another as a speculative inquiry. It generally limited relevant workplace material to the period from 1 July 2014 to 3 March 2017, when the plaintiff stopped attending work. Documents created before July 2014 could still be included where they related to matters covering that later period.
Some earlier employment records remained relevant because the defence raised the plaintiff’s performance from 2010 onwards. The court allowed discovery of his performance assessments from the start of 2010 and documents about communicating those assessments to him. It also allowed records concerning goals set for other senior engineers at Abbott Ireland’s Clonmel premises from July 2014 to March 2017. The plaintiff alleges that he was given unrealistic goals, including “60% blank goals” compared with an average of 10%, and was overworked. These are allegations, not findings in this discovery ruling.
The ruling also allowed specified records concerning the plaintiff, including material relating to alleged sidelining and overwork, health-related absences, disciplinary policies and disciplinary interactions. The court limited the policy and disciplinary records to the period beginning 1 July 2014 and ending on the termination of his employment. It confined the final category to documents relating to the disciplinary process that led to termination.
The judgment records that the plaintiff said he had been unwell with work-related stress since stopping work on 3 March 2017. Abbott disputed this, relying on material from medical examiners, and said his failure to return led to disciplinary procedures and dismissal on 28 February 2018. The court’s ruling addressed disclosure of documents; it did not determine the underlying injury claim or resolve those disputed accounts.
The court directed that an affidavit of discovery be made by a person nominated by the chief executive of Abbott Ireland’s operations in Ireland, within 12 weeks of the order being perfected. The affidavit must include electronically stored information within the relevant categories. Costs were provisionally reserved to the hearing of the action, subject to submissions; the court said the costs order would be finalised if no submissions were made within 14 days.