Comparing someone at work to the Star Wars villain Darth Vader is “insulting” and “upsetting”, an employment tribunal has ruled.
A judge concluded that being told you have the same personality type as the infamous sci-fi baddie is a workplace “detriment” – a legal term meaning harm or negative impact experienced by a person.
“Darth Vader is a legendary villain of the Star Wars series, and being aligned with his personality is insulting,” the employment judge Kathryn Ramsden said.
The tribunal’s ruling came in the case of an NHS blood donation worker Lorna Rooke, who has won almost £30,000 after her co-worker took a Star Wars-themed psychological test on her behalf and told colleagues Rooke fell into the Sith Lord’s category.
The tribunal found that the outcome of the online quiz reflected the colleague’s perception of Rooke and it was “little wonder” the NHS employee was upset by the result.
The tribunal, held in Croydon, south London, heard that in 2003 Rooke began working for the NHS Blood and Transplant service as a training and practice supervisor.
In August 2021, members of Rooke’s team took a Star Wars themed Myers-Briggs questionnaire as a team-building exercise.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator sorts people into 16 categories based on how introverted they are, level of intuition, if they are led by thoughts or feelings and how they judge or perceive the world around them.
In the movie franchise, Vader is half human, half machine, and uses the “dark side of the force” in his pursuit of his son Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance – also featuring Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and the droids C-3P0 and R2-D2.
But in the personality test, the Darth Vader category was described as a “very focused individual” who could bring teams together.
Rooke did not participate as she had to take a personal phone call but when she returned a colleague, Amanda Harber, had filled it out on her behalf and announced that she had the same personality type as Vader – real name Anakin Skywalker.
The supervisor told the tribunal this outcome made her feel unpopular and was one of the reasons for her resignation the following month.
Although the tribunal rejected her claim that the “Darth Vader incident” had prompted her to leave it did find it counted as a “detriment”.
Rooke won her case for detriment after a protected disclosure but lost claims for unfair dismissal, disability discrimination, and failure to make reasonable adjustments. She was awarded £28,989.61 in compensation.
