A ‘psychic’ IT worker who was sacked after telling a new female colleague they had already met ‘in his dreams’ has lost a court battle for compensation.
Elrich Daudet claimed the woman had appeared to him months before they met, as a muse for his poetry and songwriting.
The woman emailed another colleague complaining that Daudet – who believes he has the ‘gift’ of prophetic dreams which foretell the future – was ‘doing her head in’.
He was fired for gross misconduct after sending her ‘love poems’ likening her scent to ‘flowers in the Garden of Eden’, which a judge agreed made the woman feel ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘panicky’.
Daudet sued IT firm Computacenter (UK) Ltd, claiming damages for unfair dismissal, harassment and discrimination on the basis of his race as a black man and of his ‘protected beliefs’.
But the UK’s top employment judge, Lord Fairley, threw out his claim, saying: ‘She thought he was coming on to her and that made her feel uncomfortable.
‘It doesn’t matter whether he touches her or if it’s in an email.’
He said there was no legal error in concluding that Daudet’s belief in the power of his dreams was not a ‘protected belief’ under equality laws.
The messages he sent were also not a ‘manifestation’ of his beliefs, because he didn’t need to disclose them, and could legitimately be considered ‘harassment’ of the woman, he added.
Daudet worked as a senior computer analyst from 2008 until his dismissal in 2022, the Employment Appeal Tribunal heard.
He believes in the power of dreams to foretell the future and says that he himself has had prophetic dreams since he was a child, the judge noted.
Some of his dreams are warnings, which he feels obliged to pass on to anyone in danger, while others are ‘social’, which he does not necessarily tell anyone about, the court heard.
Daudet was introduced to the woman, a relatively new starter who he had never met before, by his boss in August 2022.
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After a face to face meet lasting only minutes, he said he soon realised that the colleague was in fact the same woman who had been appearing in his dreams after first coming to him months earlier.
He then wrote her a message, telling her that he had known for a year that they would cross paths and that she was ‘haunting’ his dreams, although not specifically mentioning his prophetic dream.
The messages resulted in him facing an internal disciplinary inquiry for harassment, which ended up with him being sacked for gross misconduct in December 2022.
After a five-day hearing in 2024, his case was rejected by an employment tribunal judge, who concluded that there was nothing unfair about his dismissal.
His belief was not a ‘protected’ one because it was too specific to his own life in that it was a belief about his own powers of premonition, the tribunal found.
Last week, he took his case to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, where his lawyers argued that the lower tribunal got it wrong in dismissing his compensation bid.
His solicitor, Chinonso Ijezie, argued that the tribunal had gone wrong in its reasoning because his belief is not merely a narrowly held one about his own powers.
Instead, it is a belief that dreams are generally capable of predicting the future and should be considered ‘protected’ under equality laws, he said.
The lower tribunal had also made findings of fact that were not open to them on the evidence, including that the colleague was ‘alarmed’ by the communications, he argued.
But giving judgment and throwing out his claims, Lord Fairley said: ‘The tribunal’s conclusion that the purported belief wasn’t protected discloses no error of law.
‘On no view were any of the messages sent by the appellant manifestations of any belief held by him.’
There was also ‘ample evidence’ of ‘distress or alarm’ caused to the woman by his communications.
The messages had effectively involved ‘love poems’, which were ‘amorous in nature’, he said, adding: ‘That’s plainly something that’s objectively sexual.
‘She thought he was coming on to her and that made her feel uncomfortable.
‘It doesn’t matter whether he touches her or if it’s in an email.’
He refused Daudet’s appeal application, upholding the dismissal of his claims.
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