The Fair Employment Tribunal in Northern Ireland has found that a small business owner committed age discrimination against an employee after she refused to enter into a joint arrangement with him relating to the purchase of land.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that, in the context of costs applications, it is unreasonable behaviour for a claimant to pursue an unfair dismissal claim purely for the purpose of obtaining a declaration that he or she was unfairly dismissed.
In Shanahan Engineering v Unite the Union EAT/0411/09, the EAT held that an employment tribunal was right to find that, in relation to collective redundancy consultation, although a customer's instruction amounted to "special circumstances", absolving the employer of the need to start consultation 30 days in advance of the first redundancy, it did not absolve it of all obligations to consult. However, the tribunal should have taken into account the special circumstances of the case in setting the level of the protective award.
The Court of Appeal has held that, where a claimant is alleging that separate incidents form one continuous act for the purposes of extending the normal time limit within which to bring a claim for racial discrimination, a relevant but not conclusive factor is whether the same individuals or different individuals were involved in the separate incidents.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that employees, who successfully claim discrimination, are entitled to be compensated for any injury to health or injury to feelings caused by the act complained of, even if they were unaware that the act complained of was discriminatory.
In Chagger v Abbey National plc and another [2009] EWCA Civ 1202 CA, the Court of Appeal confirmed that employment tribunals should ask a Polkey-type question when considering loss of earnings flowing from a discriminatory dismissal. The Court also ruled that, in appropriate cases, compensation for loss of earnings may include an element of "stigma" loss.