Employment disputes
The Supreme Court has overturned the long-standing rule that expert witnesses are immune from liability for damages to parties that have engaged them and to which they owe a duty of care, in a road-traffic accident decision that could have an impact on employment cases.
Rebekah Martin, Carly Mather, Kate Edminson and James Buckley, all associates at Addleshaw Goddard, detail the latest rulings.
The Court of Appeal has held that the tribunal was correct to decide that it had jurisdiction to hear claims of unfair dismissal and sex discrimination by two British employees who worked for the Ministry of Defence in Belgium and the Netherlands.
In Hussain v Acorn Independent College Ltd EAT/0199/10, the EAT held that a teacher had the requisite one-year period of continuous employment to bring a complaint of unfair dismissal. Continuity was preserved over the college summer vacation between his first temporary contract and a subsequent contract because his absence was on account of a "temporary cessation of work".
In Gisda Cyf v Barratt [2010] IRLR 1073 SC, the Supreme Court held that, where a dismissal is effected by letter, the effective date of termination (from which the time limit for an unfair dismissal claim begins to run) does not occur until the letter is read or until the point at which the employee has had a reasonable opportunity to read it. In doing so, the Court rejected the contention that ordinary contractual principles should apply so that the effective date of termination would be the date on which the letter is delivered.
In Todd v Strain and others [2011] IRLR 11 EAT, the EAT held that the duty to give employee representatives information about a forthcoming transfer applies even where there are no measures being proposed that give rise to a duty to consult the representatives. Informing individual employees rather than representatives did not amount to compliance with the information requirements, but should have led the tribunal to award less than the maximum compensation of 13 weeks' pay.
The Court of Appeal has held that employment tribunals do not have jurisdiction to construe contractual terms and conditions contained or referred to in written statements of particulars of employment.
The industrial tribunal in Northern Ireland has awarded over £52,000 for sex and race discrimination after an employer ignored complaints from a Polish female worker that she was being subjected to serious sexual and racial harassment in the factory in which she worked.
In St Andrews Catholic Primary School and others v Blundell EAT/0330/09, the EAT held that the appropriate award of compensation for injury to a victimised employee's feelings was £14,000, not £22,000, reflecting that it was a serious case falling within the middle Vento band. The tribunal's award of £5,000 in aggravated damages was, however, appropriate.
Ceri Hughes, David Parry, and Carly Mather, associates at Addleshaw Goddard, detail the latest rulings.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to employment disputes.