Three Kozee Sleep employees awarded over £700,000 in damages
/Balogh v Hick Lane Bedding Ltd QB-2017-000928; Benedek v Hick Lane Bedding Ltd QB-2017-000932; Novodomskzi QB-2019-00156
Three ATLEU clients have been awarded significant damages in a compensation claim against their former employer, Hick Lane Bedding Ltd. In a judgment handed down on Tuesday 9 March 2021, the High Court Queen’s Bench Division awarded damages in excess of £700,000 for what it described as an ‘egregious example of modern slavery’.
ATLEU has been representing the three men for a number of years. They were all in vulnerable situations in Hungary, facing homelessness or financial insecurity. They were approached by traffickers with the promise of jobs and good wages in the UK. When the men arrived in this country, they were forced to work in appalling conditions in a Yorkshire bed factory. This was run by the Defendant company, trading under the name Kozee Sleep, which sold products to well-known high street retailers, such as John Lewis, Next and Dunhelm.
The clients were made to work on average around fourteen hours a day, often seven days a week for just £10.00 per week and two packets of tobacco. The accommodation provided was squalid and overcrowded. One of the clients lived in a house shared with thirteen other workers, sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor in a bedroom with four other men. The food, which consisted of “two slices of bread and animal fat”, was intended to sustain workers for the whole day.
The men lived in constant fear due to threats of violence from the people who had trafficked them. One of them describes being ‘terrorised in the accommodation and in the factory’.
After managing to escape, the men were diagnosed with psychiatric injuries including PTSD and alternative adjustment disorder. They have all been prescribed therapy and two of the three men have been unable to work as a direct result of their injuries.
The High Court agreed with our clients’ submissions on general damages, loss of earnings, past loss of earnings, future loss of earnings, and to cover the costs of the treatment they required. They also found that the shocking conduct of the Defendant merited an award of exemplary damages to each claimant.
The Queen’s Bench Master concluded by expressing his deep regret that the men had suffered conditions far below what he hoped they could expect in a country like the UK.
The judgments in these matters are the first to consider in detail the approach to calculating damages in trafficking and modern slavery compensation claims.
