Judgment No. 4831
Decision
The complaint is dismissed.
Summary
The complainant challenges the rejection of his claim for compensation for service-incurred illness.
Judgment keywords
Keywords
illness; service-incurred; complaint dismissed
Consideration 4
Extract:
Consistent precedent, contained, for example, in consideration 8 of Judgment 3361, states that the Tribunal cannot substitute its own views for the medical opinions on which an administrative decision, such as the present one, is based. The Tribunal is, however, fully competent to assess whether the procedure that has been followed was correctly carried out, especially as regards respect for the adversarial principle or the right to be heard, and to examine whether the reports used as the basis for that administrative decision contain any substantive error or inconsistency, overlook essential facts or draw erroneous conclusions from the evidence (see also Judgments 3994, consideration 5, 3689, consideration 3, 2361, consideration 9, and 1284, consideration 4).
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 2361, 3361, 3689, 3994
Keywords
medical opinion; discretion; role of the tribunal
Consideration 9
Extract:
[T]he Tribunal’s case law, stated, for example, in consideration 4 of Judgment 4506, recognizes that the decision of the executive head of an organisation may be communicated to the official concerned, as is common practice, by means of a letter signed by the head of human resources management, provided that it is clear from the terms of that letter, or, at least, from consideration of the documents in the file, that the decision in question was indeed taken by the executive head herself/himself (see also Judgment 4291, consideration 17, and the case law cited therein). This principle is satisfied in this case as the terms of the impugned decision make it clear that the decision was taken by the Secretary-General. Additionally, the Chief of HRMD expressly signed the impugned decision for the Secretary-General.
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 4291, 4506
Keywords
delegated authority
Consideration 10
Extract:
The Tribunal notes that, in consideration 13 of Judgment 3649 it found that, although, by its very nature, a staff member being escorted from her or his office by officers and being escorted out of the workplace is a humiliating experience, such a course of action is admissible in the absence of any conduct of the officers that would exacerbate the humiliation, and that moreover, the disabling of a staff member’s email account and the denial of access to certain floors and facilities are simply matters of sound business practice on the part of an organisation.
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 3649
Keywords
humiliation
Consideration 12
Extract:
In a case such as the present, it was not sufficient for the complainant to simply assert, on the strength of a series of emails from his own physician, that his illness was service-incurred because it was, according to him, directly caused by the events of 14 October 2019. In notifying the complainant of the opening of an investigation for misconduct and of his suspension pending the outcome of that investigation, and in accompanying him outside the building, the organisation was implementing administrative decisions provided for in its legal framework. It was incumbent on the complainant to show that, in the way these decisions were implemented, ITU did not respect its duty of care, with the result that his illness was not solely due to the inherently unpleasant nature of the decisions in question. This would have required him to submit a specific claim to ITU as to the way he had been treated on 14 October 2019 and to possibly request that an investigation be undertaken.
Keywords
illness; service-incurred; duty of care
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