Simon Horsfield has some excellent advice for organisations dealing with disability. In “LYNSKEY LOGIC”, he considers the Employment Tribunal judgment in Lynskey v Direct Line Insurance Services. Menopause symptoms had affected the employee’s concentration, memory, mood and performance. Management processes followed, occupational health became involved and the Tribunal found disability discrimination and failures to make reasonable adjustments. Simon is cautious about the implications for employers, but his practical advice is clear: focus on adjustments, document them carefully and “consult exhaustively with the employee and OH at every step.”
Exhaustively. It is a lovely word: patient, curious, methodical. Keep talking, keep looking and resist the urge to judge a person’s behaviour by staring only at the behaviour. Ask what the disability is doing, obtain medical input and question your own response. The primitive managerial instinct is to tighten another screw because the machine has started making an inconvenient noise. Simon’s advice asks employers to think before reaching for the spanner. Disability should mean more than a sticker on a personnel file while its effects pass through the disciplinary shredder.
Then a disabled person ended up on the opposite side of litigation involving a Horsfield Menzies client. At that point, the language underwent what doctors might delicately describe as a fucking deterioration.
When The Disabled Person Was On The Other Side
The judgment in my Cepac case records anxiety and depression, medical evidence about difficulty controlling emotions and managing frustration under stress, and repeated requests to make participation manageable. I sought remote or private hearings, breaks, a companion, plain-language orders and greater control over bundles and correspondence. Those requests gave the lawyers a practical question to address: what would help this person take part?
Instead, the first respondent’s submissions described my reliance on mental health as “internally inconsistent and opportunistic”. Its attack on a GP letter addressing emotional dysregulation supplied another choice phrase: “self-serving and derivative”. Apparently the consultation exhausted itself rather quickly. Somewhere between the website and the case file, curiosity had developed a severe allergy to the opponent’s medical evidence.
Blog: Consult Exhaustively
The Lynskey case gives Simon plenty to work with. Direct Line had an employee whose performance had been good before menopause symptoms began affecting her memory, concentration, anxiety and mood. Management knew about the health issues, and occupational health later recommended adjustments. Yet formal performance processes remained part of the story. The Tribunal found that the employer should have done more to accommodate the disability. Ordinary performance targets did not become suitable merely because management expected the medical condition to wait politely outside the office.
Simon understands that danger. His article acknowledges that Direct Line appeared to disregard its own occupational-health assessment when it resisted conceding disability. The advice that follows goes beyond recognising a legal label: change the process around the person living with the condition. There is little value in solemnly acknowledging disability if the institution then treats every symptom as fresh misconduct, incompetence or inconvenience requiring its own miniature prosecution.
Curiosity Before Condemnation
That is where exhaustive consultation earns its keep. The phrase demands curiosity before condemnation. If concentration deteriorates, investigate why. Changes in behaviour under stress call for questions about the stress. Where ordinary targets have become unrealistic, revisit them. Repeatedly telling the employee that reality has failed its quarterly appraisal achieves fuck all. Occupational health exists because managers and lawyers are not clinicians, however many PDFs they print or letters they suffocate under yellow highlighting.
It is compassionate advice, but also competent risk management. Symptoms do not normally arrive wearing name badges. A mental-health condition does not issue a memo every Monday separating personality from illness. You explore that relationship by listening, looking at evidence and asking questions. Starting with the behaviour and working backwards towards a reason to dismiss the medical evidence reverses the whole exercise. Suddenly the patient needs a peer-reviewed fucking wiring diagram of his nervous system before anybody will consider what might be wrong.
Behaviour: Apparently The GP Had Joined The Conspiracy
By spring 2025, Horsfield Menzies had more than a vague claim that I sometimes felt a little stressed. Medical evidence identified anxiety and depression and described difficulty controlling emotions, particularly frustration under stress. When the possible link between disability and conduct became relevant to Cepac’s strike-out application, however, the first respondent’s submissions sounded nothing like a consultation room.
Cepac called the position “internally inconsistent and opportunistic”. Its argument treated my reliance on mental health as a retrospective attempt to avoid procedural consequences. The GP letter of 28 April 2025 addressed my difficulty controlling emotions and managing frustration under stress. For that document, the respondent chose “self-serving and derivative”.
Pause on that for a moment. A GP describes problems with emotion and stress in a patient with depression and anxiety. Meanwhile, the patient faces sprawling, hostile litigation in which his behaviour under stress has become a central issue. Rather than prompting the curiosity Simon recommends, the document becomes another target. Apparently the evidence lacked enough clinical detail, independence or causal weight to satisfy the litigation position. The consultation room had acquired a fucking loading bay for objections.
Even The Judgment Accepted The Basic Connection
The Tribunal went further than that submission in one respect. It accepted in principle that my condition could at times lead to emotional dysregulation, while finding that it could not justify the wider conduct supporting strike-out. That distinction does not rescue every email I ever sent, nor does it need to. It establishes that TCAP did not brew the underlying medical problem in a saucepan after midnight. Even the judgment that struck out my case accepted that the condition could affect emotional regulation.
Set that beside the firm’s language. Simon recommends exhaustive consultation; the case file records an attack on the explanation as opportunistic and the GP material as self-serving. Apparently occupational health gets a comfy chair when the disabled person works for your client. Across the litigation table, the GP gets crosshairs when the disabled person is fucking suing it.
A Disability Label Is Worthless If Every Symptom Goes On Trial
Institutions have a particularly nasty trick available when they want to appear disability-aware without giving any practical ground: accept the label, then litigate its effects one by one. Anxiety and depression exist, but did they cause this difficulty taking part? Emotional regulation may suffer, yet somehow this email needs its own clinical enquiry. Stress can worsen symptoms, although the claimant must now explain the precise mechanism behind each reaction. Eventually even a request for a remote hearing, breaks, a companion or some breathing room becomes another fucking hurdle.
Before long, disability exists everywhere except at the points where recognising it might change what happens next. That is why Simon’s Lynskey advice matters more than the usual corporate wellbeing wallpaper. An employer cannot sensibly recognise disability, keep every assumption intact and then act surprised when the same problems recur. The condition must inform the assessment of what happened, what is realistic and whether the process needs to change.
The Label Was Accepted. The Effects Still Faced Interrogation
Apply that approach to participation in litigation and the picture becomes uncomfortable. An opposing solicitor and an employer managing its own worker have different legal duties. Blog vs Behaviour is not a fucking correspondence course in false equivalence. This comparison concerns the firm’s approach to evidence about disability and its effects.
If Simon thinks disability should make decision-makers more curious about why somebody is struggling, why did his firm’s conduct case lean so heavily towards using the struggle against me? His published advice asks whether disability makes ordinary standards unrealistic. Yet my difficulty taking part so often led to another dispute about whether I had proved that difficulty hard enough. Recognition could stop at the diagnosis while every symptom queued for interrogation. Apparently the paperwork could acknowledge the condition without allowing it much room to explain the person.
Adjustments Became Part Of The Charge Sheet
The judgment records the measures I sought: remote or private hearings, breaks, a companion, plain-language orders and greater control over bundles and correspondence. I was not demanding that the Tribunal replace the judge with a therapy Labrador and hear the case from a hammock. These were recognisable ways to reduce the mental and emotional load on somebody who said the process had become unmanageable.
Yet the first respondent also catalogued repeated postponement requests, CVP applications and other procedural applications within its account of cost, delay and burden. By the end, requests arising from difficulty taking part sat inside the same sprawling narrative that described my conduct as intolerable.
That creates a deeply ugly loop. A process causes or worsens difficulty, so the disabled litigant asks for changes. Those requests generate correspondence and opposition, which fuel further conflict. Eventually the growing volume becomes evidence that the litigant is acting unreasonably. The patient keeps pressing the call button because the drip hurts, so somebody adds excessive use of the call button to the fucking clinical notes.
Everything Had A Counter Except The Pressure
Simon’s article identifies a similar danger from the other direction. When disability prevents an employee from meeting ordinary standards, recording each failure does not make repeated use of those standards fair. Changing the environment may help more than endlessly measuring how badly the person functions within it. Anyone who has encountered the phrase reasonable adjustment without immediately reaching for a calculator should recognise the principle.
My litigation record, meanwhile, became extraordinarily good at measuring failure. Emails, applications and correspondence all acquired a tally. Time had a cost, and costs became another argument. Eventually Horsfield Menzies’ client said it had incurred more than £50,000 and limited its application to £20,000. The one instrument apparently missing from the medical cabinet was a fucking pressure gauge for the process itself.
Simon Says Look At The Environment
This is the part of Lynskey that deserves attention beyond the menopause headline. Simon describes a Tribunal that rejected simply hammering away at standard performance management when disability affected the employee’s ability to meet the standard. His advice points towards adjusting targets, considering another role and consulting occupational health. Look at what can change before deciding that the person is the irreparable component.
That approach differs sharply from the punitive model. Instead of asking how to make the person comply with the system, it asks whether the system worsens the very problem now counting against them. My Cepac litigation became a laboratory for the opposite question. The respondent stressed the volume and tone of correspondence, postponement and remote-hearing applications, medical disputes, procedural complaints and expense. Those matters became ingredients in an argument that the litigation could no longer sensibly continue.
The possibility that the process itself contributed to those reactions attracted far less visible enthusiasm. Plenty of interest in the readings; rather less in what the machine was doing to produce them.
When Context Becomes Inventory
By January 2025, a strike-out application already existed. The case was adversarial, my mental health had deteriorated and I repeatedly described the process as hostile. Medical evidence later described problems with emotion and frustration. Those problems tend not to improve when every dispute becomes another bundle tab and every distressed reaction offers potential evidence for ending the claim.
Simon’s advice warns against simply performance-managing disability. In the litigation, the machinery effectively conduct-managed mine. The contrast shows how easily a condition can become an inventory of failures. Anxiety turns into another demand for proof. Rather than prompting changes that might help, emotional dysregulation generates a further argument about cause. Requests for adjustments join the procedural mass supposedly demonstrating how burdensome the claimant has become.
At some point the fucking thermometer starts charging the patient with having a fever. The instrument still produces neat readings, of course. Everybody can admire the quality of the record while the person inside the process keeps getting worse.
The Medical Evidence Changes Character Depending On Which Side Holds It
Another distinction runs through Simon’s article. Occupational-health evidence in Lynskey helps explain what the worker needs. Ignoring it carries risk because it sheds light on the link between health and difficulty at work. In litigation, however, medical evidence can acquire a second life: something to test, dispute, narrow and, where useful, attack.
Lawyers test evidence. Nobody hires solicitors because they want an expensive pen pal who nods sympathetically at the opponent’s documents. Trouble starts when the published approach calls for exhaustive consultation while the practical posture demands proof of every fucking synapse.
My GP letter did not issue a diplomatic passport allowing me to say anything without consequence. It described difficulty controlling emotions and managing frustration, especially under stress, with a serious effect on daily life. Anyone trying to understand behaviour under pressure ought to find that relevant. Instead, the respondent attacked the letter’s basis and weight. Its language framed the mental-health explanation as opportunistic and the document as self-serving.
Attention shifted from what the letter explained about the person to whether it could carry enough evidential weight to prevent sanctions. The question changed, along with the objective and the fucking bedside manner.
Consult Exhaustively, Unless Consultation Is Becoming Expensive
The nastiest contrast arrives with costs. Simon’s advice requires time: speak to somebody, revisit decisions, obtain medical input and allow for changes in health. Sometimes the neat managerial route needs scrapping. Disability can slow a process because human beings are inconveniently not Excel rows.
Cepac’s case stressed the opposite pressure. Correspondence consumed resources, applications required replies and repeated requests for postponement or CVP hearings caused expense. The client put its legal costs above £50,000; the Tribunal awarded £20,000. Through that lens, consultation and adjustments acquire a price tag. Each dispute creates another unit of solicitor time, while attempts to revisit arrangements generate more correspondence. Soon the disabled person starts to resemble a leaking budget line wearing shoes.
That is why Simon’s advice deserves comparison with his firm’s record. Exhaustive consultation only means something if patience survives inconvenience. Supporting disability while support is cheap, simple and someone else’s HR problem requires little courage. The test arrives when a person’s condition makes your preferred process slower, messier or less useful to your case. Everybody loves reasonable adjustments on the website. They become rather less photogenic when they send another email at 11.43pm.
The Conduct Was Examined More Thoroughly Than The Causes
By April 2026, the conduct case had become enormous. The main hearing bundle ran to 1,657 pages excluding its index, alongside a separate authorities bundle. Dedicated strike-out material compiled communications, blog articles and X posts. A recruitment discrimination claim had accumulated a paper trail capable of charting my behaviour in extraordinary detail.
That level of scrutiny tells its own story. Lawyers could identify posts, messages, applications and episodes spanning many months, place them in order and build an argument from their combined effect. The behaviour received something approaching forensic cartography. When medical evidence tried to explain part of the terrain, however, the respondent reached for “opportunistic”, “self-serving” and “derivative”.
Here Simon’s article wanders into Blog vs Behaviour carrying its own fucking exhibit label. His advice asks employers to look beneath the visible problem, investigate the link with disability and adjust their response. Horsfield Menzies plainly had the capacity for detailed scrutiny. It seemed far more enthusiastic when that scrutiny produced evidence against me.
Reactions filled the catalogue. Applications acquired procedural meaning, while blog posts and tweets supplied more material for the picture of a claimant whose conduct had supposedly made the case impossible. If only the causes had received the same loving attention as the fucking symptoms.
The Advice Is Excellent. That Is The Problem
Simon Horsfield has written a useful article, which is why it belongs here. Disability may alter performance and make ordinary expectations unsuitable. Medical evidence can explain those effects, while adjustments offer ways to address them. Decision-makers should stay curious about the link between the condition and the problem instead of charging towards sanctions with their clipboard already completed.
Place that advice beside litigation in which his firm acted for the respondent. I repeatedly said the process worsened my health and made taking part harder. My GP described difficulty controlling emotion under stress. I sought remote participation, privacy, breaks, a companion and clearer directions. Cepac nevertheless pursued strike-out and attacked the mental-health explanation as opportunistic, describing the GP material as self-serving and derivative.
The legal settings differ; the human issue remains. Disability can change what behaviour means, which standards are realistic and what a fair process asks of the people controlling it. That remains an uncomfortable truth when your own client is paying the invoice.
Then Invoice For The Treatment
Simon recommends focusing on adjustments, documenting them carefully and involving medical expertise. Exhaustive consultation is central to that advice. In the Cepac litigation, his firm had medical evidence describing anxiety, depression and problems regulating emotion under stress. Repeated requests for participation measures sat alongside my warnings that the process was making matters worse.
The firm’s client pursued strike-out and £20,000 in costs while attacking part of the medical explanation behind those requests. On the website, the advice asks employers to investigate, understand and adjust before turning the process into punishment. The litigation version looked rather more clinical: accept the diagnosis, contest the symptoms and catalogue the reaction. Then invoice for the fucking treatment.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project