A factory worker was driven to a nervous breakdown after being bullied relentlessly by a gang of female colleagues known as "the three witches", a court heard yesterday.
Steven Keyte, 46, said his suffering, both physical and mental, was akin to "death by a thousand cuts".
Led by Collette Clifford, the wife of the works foreman Michael Clifford, they abused him mercilessly for three years, he claimed, dishing out "psychiatric injury in bucketfuls".
Yesterday he launched a £200,000 damage claim against the firm, Cotek Papers Ltd.
The court heard that Mrs Clifford, aided by her friends Diane Edgeworth and Janet Dyer, who have since left the company, would pick on him, including deliberately and regularly coming close to crushing his fingers or hands when they were packing paper reams or coils together.
She would rap him on the ankles with a trolley when she pushed past him rather than ask him to move, and did not talk to him for three years, except to grunt in response if he offered to help or summon him to help in a raised voice or simply by beckoning.
Mr Keyte, from Moreton-in-Marsh, said his tormentors were known in the company as "the three witches", adding: "I never called them that."
The hearing continues.
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