Another "True Stories &c" winner... involving lawyers!

An assiduous reader has entered Walt's "True stories &c" contest, with an instant winner, from yesterday's online edition of the (UK) Daily Mail.

Tarique Mohammed, Esquire, a senior barrister with the English Crown Prosecution Service, sued the CPS for harassment and discrimination after a colleague asked him to stop breaking wind. He lost.

An employment tribunal was told that Mr Mohammed was left feeling "embarrassed" after he was asked by a colleague to cease farting in the small office they shared. He said he couldn't help his flatulence because it was caused by medication he was taking for a heart condition. 

In his claim for disability, he also accused co-workers and bosses of discriminating against him by deliberately throwing his water bottles away when he left them on a shared desk, asking him to work one day a week 60 miles away, and failing to pay for his barrister's practising certificate while he was on sick leave.

The tribunal threw out Mr Mohammed's claims of disability related harassment and victimisation and found the request to stop passing gas reasonable, given the size of the office shared with his colleague, and the "repetitive nature" of the flatulence. The judge apparently took his colleague's word that he threw out five water bottled which Mr Mohammed had left on their shared desk because he thought they were rubbish.

All the same, the tribunal found the CPS was guilty of disability discrimination and failing to make reasonable adjustments by not allowing the barrister to work from home two days a week, leave work at 4pm to help him manage his condition, and by removing him from court duties. 

Source: Mailonline, 21/12/21. Reporter: Bhvishya Patel (presumably a non-Muslim).