Katherine Cawthorn, the trainee suing her employer Freshfields for loss of career after she contracted dysentery on a business trip to Ghana, has made a further claim of sex discrimination against the firm.

In her discrimination pleading, Cawthorn alleges that while she had to ask to return home from Ghana and was left to make her own travel arrangements, a male Freshfields trainee (referred to as “Owen”) who contracted cancer of the tongue after being sent on a business trip to Tokyo, was flown home, met at the airport and given financial and moral support during his illness.

Cawthorn said that she has been told that she may become infertile because of the drug she is having to take for her continuing illness.

Alan Peck, Freshfields senior partner, said, “We utterly reject any suggestion that there was sex discrimination in this case.”