Contracts of employment
In Aspden v Webbs Poultry & Meat Group (Holdings) Ltd, the High Court implies a term into an employee's contract of employment providing that, save for summary dismissal, the employer would not terminate the contract while the employee was incapacitated for work.
The unilateral imposition of a continuous rolling shift pattern in place of the traditional shifts previously worked by employees in accordance with their contracts amounted to an express dismissal of those employees, who reserved their right to complain of unfair dismissal even though they worked under the new system, holds the EAT in Alcan Extrusions v Yates and others.
There is no legal basis on which a court can, in enforcing a restrictive covenant by injunction, allow some kind of set-off against the period during which the employee has been on garden leave, holds the Court of Appeal in Armstrong and others v Credit Suisse Asset Management Ltd.
In Aparau v Iceland Frozen Foods plc the EAT overturns an industrial tribunal's decision that there was an express or implied term in an employee's contract of employment entitling the employer to move her, against her will, from one branch of its food stores to another.
In Quinn and others v Calder Industrial Materials Ltd the EAT upholds an industrial tribunal's ruling that the employer was not in breach of contract by failing to make enhanced redundancy payments to redundant employees.
In Wilson and others v St Helens Borough Council, the EAT holds that the Transfer of Undertakings Regulations prohibit even a consensual variation in the terms and conditions of employment of employees transferred where the transfer of the undertaking is the reason for the variation
In Alliance Paper Group Plc v Prestwich [1996] IRLR 25 HC, the High Court held that the employer was entitled to enforce a covenant restraining the employee from poaching staff who had been employed by the employer "in a senior capacity".
It is an implied term of every employee's contract of employment that their employer will reasonably and promptly afford them a reasonable opportunity to obtain redress of any grievance they may have, holds the EAT in WA Goold (Pearmak) Ltd v McConnell and another.
In Ali and others v Christian Salvesen Food Services plc the EAT holds that a contract of employment, which provided that overtime payments would be made only when the employee had worked more than the annualised hours total of 1,824 hours in the working year, contained an implied term entitling the employee, whose employment terminated several months before the end of the working year, to overtime payments in certain circumstances.
An employee who agreed to relocate but later decided not to move was not dismissed by reason of redundancy, but rather because of his intention not to comply with the relocation clause in his contract, holds the EAT in Richardson and another v Applied Imaging International Ltd.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to contracts of employment.