A woman who tried unsuccessfully to sue her boss for sexual harassment after allowing him to believe she was interested in pursuing a romantic relationship in return for lavish gifts, has been ordered to pay £15,000 in legal costs.
Emma Hennell-Whittington, who was in her late 30s and engaged, was employed as a personal assistant by Peter Metcalfe, the 54-year-old owner of a nationwide haulage firm based in the market town of Hawes, North Yorkshire, in August 2021.
In addition to an annual salary of £30,000, for which she worked just 10 hours a week, Ms Hennell-Whittington received gifts worth tens of thousands of pounds including a Volkswagen Tiguan car and a Honda Civic.
While she pursued a leisurely lifestyle, swimming and shopping during office hours, Metcalfe paid for Ms Hennell-Whittington to have Botox beauty treatments and even offered to cover the £45,000 cost of buying out her fiance’s share of a house where she lived with her teenage daughter from another relationship.
In a judgment published following an employment tribunal last May, it was noted that Ms Hennell-Whittington ‘did not, at any stage until the breakdown of the employment relationship, inform him she was not interested romantically’.
In July 2022, she attended a charity ball at Mr Metcalfe’s haulage firm with Alan Grieves, an Ultimate Strongman competitor with whom she had started a relationship two months earlier, when she was ‘still in a relationship with her fiancé’.
It was only then that ‘the penny finally began to drop’ for Mr Metcalfe, the tribunal heard, noting that ‘he felt humiliated’.
Mr Metcalfe, who had repeatedly declared his love for Ms Hennell-Whittington, the tribunal heard, terminated her employment five days later.
Peter Metcalfe, left, is seen with Emma Hennell-Whittington, who has been ordered to pay £15,000 in costs after an unsuccessful attempt to sue her former boss for sexual harassment
Ms Hennell-Whittington was sacked after bringing Ultimate Strongman competitor Alan Grieves, with whom she started a relationship while engaged to another man, to a work event
Her subsequent claims of sex discrimination and harassment related to sex were dismissed, and she has now been ordered to pay Mr Metcalfe’s haulage firm £15,000 in legal costs.
An employment judge, who described Ms Hennell-Whittington as ‘an articulate and intelligent individual’ but an ‘unreliable historian’, said she knew the case would ‘embarrass’ her former employer.
‘By insisting on proceeding to a final hearing, [she] effectively compelled [Mr Metcalfe] to be subjected to public scrutiny about matters that she knew, or at least ought reasonably to have known, were likely to be difficult and embarrassing for him,’ said Kirti Jeram.
The judge previously ruled Ms Hennell-Whittington had ‘encouraged’ Metcalfe’s affection as part of a ‘transactional’ relationship that afforded her a lifestyle she ‘could not reasonably expect’ in any other job.
‘[Mr Metcalfe] described her as the “best thing in the world I’ve ever met” and he was regularly and explicitly expressing his love for her,’ the tribunal heard.
‘[She] did not reciprocate those words; she did not ask him to stop, either. [She] did, however, inform [him] of her desires and financial needs.
‘[He] believed that they were developing their relationship, platonic as it was now, in secret, with a possibility of exploring an open and romantic relationship in the not so distant future.
‘[She] knew that those were [his] beliefs and hopes and she took no steps to scotch them.’
Mr Metcalfe had made plain his desire to forge a relationship with Ms Hennell-Whittington, whom he first met when dealing with the Stockton fertiliser firm she worked for in early 2021, from the outset, said Judge Jeram.
‘Before the employment relationship commenced, there was nothing at all to prevent [her] from simply informing [him] that his affection for her was misplaced and unwanted,’ she said.
‘We reject [her] case that [his] affections for her grew in a vacuum, without any reciprocation, encouragement or input from her.
‘We characterise her conduct towards [him] as being transactional in nature.’
Making the costs order following the latest hearing, the judge said Ms Hennell-Whittington had been warned her case was likely to fail.
