Harassment cases at major professional firms have certainly been memorable – the Deutsche Bank secretary awarded £800,000 by a High Court judge for being subjected to a campaign of harassment by colleagues; the female lawyer at Merrill Lynch awarded £1 million after claiming a male colleague made lewd comments to her at a Christmas party; a male worker at Cantor Fitzgerald brokers who won nearly £1 million after months of bullying by his boss. However, these one-off stories have only served to distort the reality of the situation, that harassment and violence are common in UK workplaces.

The 2006 House of Lords ruling in Majrowski v Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust opened the doors for people subjected to violence and harassment to sue their employer for negligence under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. This has raised a number of questions over the consequences and highlighted a lack of knowledge of the scale and nature of such incidents.