The Respondent employed the Claimant in its diplomatic mission in London. The Claimant claimed discrimination and harassment, contrary to the Equality Act 2010, and claimed that he had suffered personal injury, consisting of psychiatric injury, as a result. The Respondent claimed state immunity. At a Preliminary Hearing, the ET held that the Respondent employed the Claimant in the exercise of state authority, so that section 16(1) of the State Immunity Act 1978 (SIA) applied. This provides for state immunity in respect of claims relating to a person’s contract of employment in such circumstances. Such immunity applies to statutory employment claims (s17(4A). However, section 5 of the SIA provides that there is no state immunity as respects proceedings in respect of death or personal injury caused by an act or omission in the United Kingdom. The ET held that section 5 applied, because the Claimant’s employment claim was one for compensation for personal injury, and so that there was no state immunity. The Respondent appealed on two grounds. Ground 1 was that the ET should have found that the exception to state immunity for personal injury claims, in section 5 SIA, does not apply to personal injury claims arising out of employment that are within the scope of section 16(1) of the SIA. There have been three previous decisions of the EAT, Military Affairs Office of the Embassy of the State of Kuwait v Caramba-Coker (Unreported, 10 April 2003), Federal Republic of Nigeria v Ogbonna [2012] ICR 32, and Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia (Cultural Bureau) v Alhayali [2023] EAT 149; [2024] IRLR 381, in which the EAT has held that section 5 applies to such cases, so that there was no state immunity. However, in Alhayali in the Court of Appeal, [2025] EWCA Civ 1162; [2025] IRLR 918, Bean LJ had said, obiter, that these decisions were wrong. Ground 2 was that the ET had erred in law because it should have found that, even if the section 5 exception to state immunity applies to such employment-related personal injury claims, section 5 does not cover psychiatric injury and so does not apply to the Claimant’s claims. The Respondent accepted that the EAT was bound to dismiss the appeal on this ground, in light of the ruling of the Court of Appeal on the same point in Shehabi v Bahrain [2024] EWCA Civ 1158; [2025] KB 490.

The EAT dismissed the appeal on both grounds. On ground 1, the EAT considered the law relating to the circumstances in which the EAT should follow previous EAT decisions on the same point of law. The EAT followed the guidance of Singh J in British Gas Trading v Lock and another [2016] ICR 502. The EAT held that the normal convention that the EAT should follow its own previous decisions applies to state immunity cases. The EAT also held that none of the exceptional cases in which the EAT was not required to follow its own previous decisions applied: the previous decisions were not per incuriam, they were not manifestly wrong, and there were no exceptional reasons why the EAT should not follow the previous decisions. The fact that a Court of Appeal judge had stated, obiter, that the decisions were wrongly decided did not, mean, automatically, that they were manifestly wrong. The point in Ground 2 has been subject to a further appeal to the Supreme Court, in which judgment is pending. Unless and until the ruling of the Court of Appeal in Shehabi is overturned by the Supreme Court, the ruling is binding on the EAT.