The result of the Majrowski case has already precipitated other actions against employers for workplace bullying under the Protection from Harassment Act.

In Green v DB Group, which has had a good deal of publicity in the papers, an executive sued her employers for psychiatric injury brought about by bullying and harassment. She won despite a finding that she was unusually vulnerable to such bullying. The award covered prospective as well as actual earnings and will cost her employers a great deal of money.

The bullying consisted of two parts: extraordinarily childish and spiteful treatment by the members of the secretariat of the firm, including personal remarks and ‘blanking’ and the actions of a fellow manager described by the judge as: ‘domineering, disrespectful, dismissive, confrontational and designed to undermine her and belittle her before others.’

A major contributory factor was weak management that allowed this to happen.

The moral is that it is not enough to have policies or to hope that people will sort things out among themselves. It is for senior management to know what is happening and to do something effective about it.