The court on Monday ordered a security firm to pay a former employee Ksh3.2 million after firing him over a relationship with a junior employee.
Delivering the verdict, Justice James Rika awarded Ksh3.2 million to the employee citing that employers do not have the legal capacity to police romantic relationships at the workplace.
"Nothing is more degrading than for a third party, an employer, to intermeddle in a love relationship between two consenting adult employees," he ruled.
The employee had moved to court challenging what he termed as unfair termination over an alleged affair with a junior employee.
It was reported that at the time of the firing, the employee was a senior manager until 2020 when he was terminated because of an affair at work.
In his ruling, Justice James Rika noted that matters of love should be left to individuals to decide emphasising that it’s not in the employers' domain to patronise the affairs of the heart of its employees.
The complainant testified on November 13, 2020, that his employer gave him a letter outlining the cause of his dismissal.
The employee was alleged to have directly swayed the decision to an irregular transfer of another employee, who was his junior to a different assignment. He was reportedly making sexual advances to her.
The complainant admitted to having a sexual relationship with his junior employee who was dismissed after it was established she had lied to the company that her boss had made her pregnant and declined to offer her child support.
A DNA test conducted proved that the child born by the junior employee was not sired by the senior employee.
In defense to the allegations levelled against him, the senior employee told the court he had no powers to influence her junior’s transfer but the judge noted there was no evidence to support it.
"In the view of the Court, there was evidence of a sexual relationship between the two but no convincing evidence, that the sexual relationship, morphed into sexual harassment," he ruled.
Despite the company’s clause 14 of the Sexual harassment policy indicating that sexual relationship is prohibited, the Judge observed it violated the lover's right to privacy.
"In progressive jurisdiction, the courts have intervened in favour of protecting workplace romance, so long as it does not affect work performance," Justice James Rika added.
