Received 53.9 Million Won in Damages Through Lawsuit
Court: "Insult to Call Someone 'Like Darth Vader'"
A British woman, who became enraged after a coworker told her she had a personality like the legendary Star Wars villain Darth Vader, has been awarded compensation of more than 50 million won through a lawsuit.
According to foreign media outlets such as The Guardian and BBC on May 9 (local time), an employment tribunal in Croydon, South London, ruled that Rona Luke, an employee at a National Health Service (NHS) blood donation center, was entitled to compensation of 28,990 pounds (approximately 53.9 million won) in a lawsuit she filed against a coworker.
The incident took place in August 2021. At that time, Luke's team participated in a team-building activity involving a Myers-Briggs personality type test themed around Star Wars. Commonly known as the MBTI test, this indicator classifies people into 16 personality types based on their level of introversion or extroversion, intuition, thinking and feeling tendencies, and the way they judge or perceive the world around them.
Luke was unable to participate in the test because she was on a personal phone call. After returning from the call, she found out that her colleague Amanda Harbour had filled out the test on her behalf. That was not all. The test results showed that Luke was classified as the villainous "Darth Vader" type. In this test, the Darth Vader type was described as "an individual with intense focus and a unifying force within the team," but Luke perceived her colleague's actions as a serious insult. She argued in court that this made her feel unpopular at work and caused her significant anxiety, depression, and a sense of isolation in the workplace.
In response, Harbour argued that Darth Vader also had positive traits, but the tribunal did not accept this claim. The court determined that describing someone as having a personality like the notorious Darth Vader constituted a "detriment" in the workplace that negatively affected Luke. The tribunal also explained that Luke, who had worked as an education and practice supervisor at NHS Blood and Transplant since 2003, resigned in 2021, and that this incident was one of the decisive reasons for her resignation.
Employment Judge Catherine Champions-Legdon stated, "Darth Vader is the legendary villain of the Star Wars series, and comparing someone's personality to his is clearly an insulting act."
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