It seems like everyday we are peppered with negativity in the news so it’s always nice to see some negativity turned into positivity!
So for this story we find ourselves at the gym. Now if you are at the gym you’ve already made the decision to make yourself better at life. We’ve all had that New Year’s Resolution to get back to the gym and I’ve tried many times and failed just as much. So when someone gets their ass to the gym, they should automatically get a round of applause.
Ketan Aggarwal is one of those amazing people that actually went to the gym. He was at a Virgin Active club spin class in London when he was the victim of a hate crime. Ketan is actually autistic and staff members at the gym actually had the audacity to call him “stupid.”
So instead of being sad about being called names, what did Ketan do? Oh you know he just did what any normal person would do, he went and learned law to sue them…and THEN HE WON!
It all began when Ketan and another classmate at the spin class said that the music was too slow for the routine they were doing. Then the instructor yelled:
Don’t tell me how to do my job.
This wasn’t all though, the instructors continued with the class and shouted at Ketan a few more times using the word “stupid.” Ketan followed his appointment with a formal complaint to Virgin Active but no action was taken against the employee.
Since nothing ever happened, Ketan decided to keep the fight up and sued Virgin Active for disability discrimination. Normally, Ketan worked as an Office Administrator but in his free time he would go to his local library and read up on the law on disability discrimination.
It took him two years but he didn’t stop and he eventually won the case. Virgin Active was ordered to pay him costs, compensation and to formally apologize. I would have gotten the apology on video but Ketan is probably not that petty.
This is what he had to say:
“He called me stupid twice. Calling someone with a mental disability ‘stupid’ is similar to mocking a guy in a wheelchair.
If I was that stupid I wouldn’t have been able to successfully pursue the claim against a solicitor of a billion-pound company. It was two years coming and it was hard work.
I’m not a legal professional and I had to do a huge amount of paperwork. I had to live in the library, picking up law from the books and getting templates for submitting paperwork from the internet.
It was worth it though. It wasn’t about the money it was about the principle.”
Isn’t that awesome?! He did it because of the principle! Amazing!