A Hong Kong court has dismissed a HK$1 million (US$128,300) discrimination claim by a British engineer who complained about being called a gweilo and excluded from a tunnel construction project after finding his poor work relationship with colleagues was the real reason he lost his job.

The District Court on Friday ruled against Francis William Haden in an equal opportunity action that shed light on the use of the Cantonese slang. Gweilo, which translates to “ghost man”, is sometimes used disparagingly to mean “foreign devil”, but the widespread use of the word in Hong Kong is generally considered benign.

The judge found that no basis existed to suggest the use of the word in the workplace must entail racial hostility and the term would not necessarily carry a derogatory meaning.

The term “gweilo” is widely used in Hong Kong, with the word even adopted for a local beer brand.

Haden, who also has Australia citizenship, filed the lawsuit in 2018 to seek damages and a written apology from Leighton Contractors (Asia) for alleged violation of the Race Discrimination Ordinance, after he was sacked the previous year.

The blasting specialist was appointed a team leader by the joint venture between Leighton and China State Construction Engineering (Hong Kong) in a 2016 tunnel project to bridge Tseung Kwan O and Lam Tin. The 2.2km underpass is expected to be completed sometime in the middle of this year.

Haden said he had been made to feel “unwelcome and frozen out” in meetings and from updates between August 2016 and February 2017 because he was not Chinese.

He recounted an occasion where a senior member of the China State team said he did not want non-Chinese engineers. He also quoted a Leighton employee, who claimed that China State workers had grumbled about the large number of “gweilos” at work. He argued the expression displayed general and underlying hostility towards expats.

He alleged that as a result, his colleagues had bypassed him in recruitment matters and left him out of meetings and emails correspondence.

Haden had asked for HK$822,133 in compensation, equivalent to eight months’ salary, plus HK$200,000 for injury to feelings.

But two of Haden’s supervisors, both foreign nationals, testified at last November’s trial that they did not find the slang derogatory. One of them went further to suggest Haden’s legal bid was “an afterthought to harass Leighton”.

They maintained that the company had lawfully terminated Haden’s contract because of his “unprofessional and unconstructive” conduct and “dismissive” attitude towards team members, especially those from China State.

In his 162-page ruling, Judge Herbert Au-yeung Ho-wing found there were “reasonable and satisfactory” grounds for Leighton to dismiss Haden, given his poor relationship with China State staff, failure to work as a team and record of openly complaining about the partnering firm with external parties.

“Although there is no dispute that the claimant was technically very capable, it is also evident that he had other problems which made him difficult to work with others as a team,” he said, adding that the non-engagement issues were likely the result of poor teamwork of staff from two different companies.

The Hong Kong-born arbiter found no basis to suggest the use of gweilo in the workplace must entail racial hostility, stressing that it was widely used in Hong Kong and could bear different connotations.

“I do not accept that the mere usage of this term would give such a feeling [of racial hostility] at all,” the judge said. “In my view, the claimant had either misunderstood the real meaning of the term or he had exaggerated his bad feeling.”

Au-Yeung pointed out that none of the examples raised by Haden involved the slang being used specifically to describe him, and his supervisors, being foreign nationals, had no issue with people using the term.

Instead, the judge found it reasonable for the senior member from China State to request Chinese engineers for the project so that they could communicate effectively in the local dialect.

He also noted that none of those involved in the decision to end Haden’s employment were Chinese.

“Even if the term gweilo was used in the workplace, it would not necessarily carry a derogatory meaning as alleged. The claimant has failed to prove that there was any background of racial hostility in the project,” the judge concluded.

Legal scholar Simon Young Ngai-man, of the University of Hong Kong, said the implications that could be drawn from the ruling were limited.

“Context matters, as is true for most things in the law,” he said, adding that most people in Hong Kong would agree that gweilo did not necessarily carry a pejorative meaning.

Stephen Matthews, a Chinese linguist at the University of Hong Kong, told the Post on Friday that gweilo was a jocular rather than offensive one which had been widely adopted by Western men to refer to themselves.

While the expression could become demeaning if used together with an insulting prefix, the British professor noted the slang had lost its “devilish” undertone, and some male expats were in fact proud of being “gweilos”.

“The word evidently appeals to British people, possibly as a case of self-deprecating humour, which is quite a British thing,” he added.