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Has anyone here had to decide whether to settle or take an autism-related disability discrimination case to Employment Tribunal?

ava

I’m asking anonymously on behalf of someone close to me who is autistic and currently at that decision point. There have been significant issues around reasonable adjustments, Occupational Health recommendations and long-term sickness absence. A solicitor is involved and the employer has now indicated that they may be willing to discuss settlement, but a Tribunal claim has not yet been submitted.

I would really value hearing from autistic people who have personally been in this position, particularly if you had legal representation.

What did your solicitor advise — settlement or continuing to Tribunal, and why? Did you feel your solicitor properly understood autism when assessing the strength of your case?

I’m also interested in whether anyone was advised that a reasonable-adjustments case was difficult because employers have discretion over what is considered “reasonable”, and what happened if you decided to proceed anyway.

I’m not looking for general legal advice or signposting to services — I specifically want to hear about people’s lived experience of making this decision with their solicitor.

  • Yes - I had to take an employer in this direction due to their persistent failure to implement the reasonable adjustments they had agreed to in writing, plus some unpleasant derogatory comments made about me as an Autistic person.

    I did eventually settle - but for a decent sum of money - as I would not have got much more if it had gone to tribunal. The extra hassle and stress was not worth it.

    The company did try and bluff it out, and it got to under two weeks before going to court. I was prepared to go all the way if needed, which they realised and then capitulated.

    My legal advice / solicitor was provided by my union, and the support was pretty good. However, I had done much of the work for them by documenting EVERYTHING in minute and date stamped detail. The union were happy to take it to court and had started engaging the services of a barrister. The decisions were all at my discretion.

    I think much of it is up to you, deciding whether the hassle and stress of a court case is worthwhile.

    After this initial settlement things at work were OK for a while, then they slipped back into not cooperating, so I took action again, and got a further settlement for breach of the original settlement agreement.

    I then left the company, having secured a better job elsewhere, realising that things would never change,