Andorra la VellaA lawyer who worked as a secretary of an AREB Board of Directors received 4,337 euros per month for thirteen payments. The lawyer added that she had suffered workplace harassment by the director of the organization Òscar Gelabert Ribera. This resulted in an anxiety attack for the worker which resulted in a medical leave. The diagnosis was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The woman remained on medical leave due to a common illness (generalized anxiety disorder. After three years, CASS decided to grant her medical leave, recognize her a 60% PPI, and started charging a group I pension for common illness.
The lawyer asked for justified withdrawal from the job for “not providing effective employment to the employee, assigning them tasks inferior to those corresponding to their professional group, or subjecting them to workplace harassment”. Also “in general, any act of the employer or his representatives that in any way is vexatious to the employee, offends his dignity as a person, obliges him to violate the legal system, or involves discrimination or conduct constituting moral or sexual harassment.” He claimed amounts in compensation amounting to 520,000 euros.
And he added as a request “to order the other party to pay the amount that results from the medical, psychiatric, psychological, pharmacological treatment and other future expenses that are proven and that originate from the present facts”.
The AREB denied the facts reported by the lawyer and refused to pay compensation. The Batllia rejected the lawyer’s request, with a minimum compensation of 310 euros, and, in addition, made her pay the court costs. The Superior Court has not given him the right either. The two sentences are based on the fact that the events the woman complains about took place in 2018, when she took leave due to depression, and it wasn’t until 2021 when she was already on leave that she resigned from her job with the request for damages.
Immediacy is essential, according to the judgment, for a claim of this type. It loses all force if it is presented three years later. The decision concludes that “the requirement of relative immediacy between the breach imputed to the employer and the worker’s decision intervenes as an element of causation and must be verified on each occasion by the jurisdictional bodies from the moment in that the legislator configures the worker’s withdrawal as causal.