Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 21 Equal Status Act, 2000

CA-00010014-001

03/03/2017

The complainant and her family went to the cinema on a Sunday morning, November 13th 2106 to see the film; Finding Dory.

They purchased tickets and proceeded to the auditorium and on the way there were told that they could sit wherever they wished.

There were only about four other people in the cinema.

They sat in the front row in the premium, recliner seats.

A short time later they were approached and asked for their tickets, and when it emerged that they were not the right tickets for those seats were asked to move.

They refused to do so. They left the cinema feeling ‘embarrassment and humiliation’.

She claims discrimination on the grounds of her family status as they were not provided with accommodation for the child’s buggy.

The respondent says that the complainant bought standard ‘Mini Morning’ tickets and sat in the premium seats which were €5.00 dearer.

When this was noticed, she was asked to move, or pay the extra for the premium seats.

She was asked to move only a few seats to the left in the front row and beside a facility for storing buggies which is generally a wheelchair bay.

She refused to do so.

They were asked to leave and when they failed to do so the screening was halted.

The complainant’s husband became loud and abusive and demanded a refund including for part consumed food.

The other customers were brought to a different screen to see the film and the loud and abusive behaviour continued and the Gardaí were called.

The respondent says that there has been no discriminatory treatment and that the complainant has not made out a prima facie case.

The reason the family was asked to move was because they had bought the wrong tickets.

The respondent says the complainant also failed to meet the requirements of the two-month notification notice.

These event took place in a near empty cinema on a Sunday morning as the complainant and her family settle themselves in the plush, premium seats to watch a children’s film having been told that they could sit anywhere.

I reviewed photographs of the cinema and there were a small number of these premium seats in the front row.

It is hard to blame the family for sitting in them but it is harder to believe that they really believed that the rather generalised advice that they could ‘sit anywhere’ included these seats. Perhaps they did.

But if they did it is extraordinary that on being advised of the position that they refused to move and proceeded to cause something of a fracas in the cinema resulting in disruption to other patrons.

The complainant was being asked to move a matter of a couple of metres, horizontally to accommodation quite suitable for a family. Why it felt the necessity to do so in a near empty cinema is another matter but it did have the right to.

When asked at the hearing why she did not do so the complainant said that it was ‘a matter of principle’.

A matter of principle is variously defined as ‘something you feel you must do (or not do) because of your moral principles’.

It is hard to see an application of ‘moral principles’ to where one might sit on a Sunday morning in a cinema watching Finding Dory. There were further insights into the complainant’s attitude when she described her ‘embarrassment and humiliation’ on leaving the cinema. She and her family had the simplest of remedies for avoiding this humiliation had they been less obdurate about where they sat.

But it is even harder to see how the respondent’s actions might come remotely close to a breach of the Equal Status Act.

That Act requires that there be ‘less favourable treatment’ of the complainant on the relevant grounds. The respondent requested the complainant to move a short distance that barely required her and her family to stand up to do so. She would have remained in the front row and the reason for doing so was because she had not bought the correct ticket, not because of her family status.

The respondent may have mistakenly assumed that it would have been obvious to the average customer that being told to ‘sit anywhere’ did not include these seats and it should be more careful on this score.

But its failure to do so comes nowhere remotely close to grounding the complainant’s case which is vexatious and without any merit whatsoever.

No prima facie case has been made out and the complaint fails.

For the reasons set out above I dismiss complaint CA-0010014.