Ghanaian loses ?60,000 in racism case

....Appeal clears housing boss of racism

THE verdict of a tribunal that awarded record damages for racial discrimination was perverse, a judge ruled yesterday.

In 1998 an employment tribunal hearing found that Bernard Crofton, 55, of Lewisham, South London, had acted in a racially discriminatory way, but the ruling was quashed yesterday by the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT), sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice. "We have firmly and unanimously concluded that the tribunal's decision on these four issues cannot stand," it said.

The ?60,000 damages that Mr Crofton, who is white, was ordered to pay to a black colleague, Sam Yeboah, have been nullified. The previous highest individual award had been ?1,000. Mr Yeboah, a magistrate, will, however, be able to keep a record ?380,000 compensation paid by Hackney Council, his employer, for racial discrimination.

Mr Justice Burton yesterday catalogued a series of mistakes made by the 1998 panel, including wrong conclusions, wrong assumptions and poor analysis of the evidence, which made its verdicts perverse. Three of the four cases were ordered to be sent back for a fresh hearing, with the judge ordering that if they went ahead then they should be heard by a different tribunal. The fourth was quashed.

Mr Crofton welcomed the verdict, which followed a six-year fight to clear his name after he was suspended by Hackney council from his job as director of housing after the Ghanaian- born Mr Yeboah, 54, accused him of racial discrimination. "I feel vindicated. There was no racial discrimination on my part," he said. "That's something I have maintained all along."

Before working for Hackney Mr Crofton worked as an adviser to the Commission for Racial Equality. His supporters include Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London. He took early retirement in 1998 and is now a housing consultant.

Mr Yeboah had, the EAT found, accused Mr Crofton of suggesting that West Africans had a propensity for fraud. The claim came after Mr Crofton accused Mr Yeboah of failing to take action against suspected systematic fraud. After a full investigation, with Mr Yeboah's help, frauds totalling ?40 million were found.

Mr Yeboah, of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, described the EAT judgment as "wholly flawed in law" and said that he intended to seek leave to appeal.

The EAT ruling made it clear that the panel was unhappy with the amount of compensation awarded against Mr Crofton. The judgment added: "It is possible that the parties themselves will decide that such a rehearing is not desirable or desired, particularly in the light of the very substantial compensation already received."

A spokeswoman for Hackney council said that the authority was unlikely to appeal against the verdict against it.