Unfair dismissal
In Baddeley v Mehta t/a Supascoop, an industrial tribunal holds that a new right to claim unfair dismissal on grounds of health and safety does not apply to an employee who had resigned.
An employer is entitled to expect that an employee will not compete with it for contracts with existing customers, holds the EAT in Adamson v B&L Cleaning Services Ltd.
In a number of recent cases, the EAT has considered the approach industrial tribunals should take when considering reducing unfair dismissal compensation on the grounds that the unfairness was due only to "procedural" failures.
In Duffy v Yeomans & Partners Ltd [1994] IRLR 642 CA, the Court of Appeal held that the Industrial Tribunal had not erred in holding that the employers' failure to consult the appellant employee before dismissing him on grounds of redundancy did not render the dismissal unfair in circumstances in which, on the facts known to the employers at the time the employee was dismissed, consultation would have served no useful purpose, even though the employers had not made a deliberate decision not to consult.
Rejecting a s. 41 defence, a Bury St Edmunds industrial tribunal (Chair: J Barnes) in York v Olan Mills Incorporated rules that the dismissal of a US citizen working for a US company in the UK when she refused to relocate back to the USA was unlawful race discrimination. Finding that the employee was also unfairly dismissed, the tribunal awarded compensation totalling almost £22,000.
In Clifford v Devon County Council the EAT has ruled that public sector employees are eligible to bring an unfair dismissal complaint, by using EC law, even though they work less than eight hours per week.
In Polkey v AE Dayton Services Ltd, the House of Lords ruled that a redundancy dismissal will usually be unfair if the employee was not warned or consulted prior to dismissal. But the Lords said there may be exceptions to this rule where the employer, at the time of dismissal, could reasonably take the view that consultation or warnings would be useless.
In Interconnection Systems Ltd v Gibson, an employee was unfairly constructively dismissed when her employer imposed new shift patterns, and refused to accept that the domestic difficulties created by this change were a ground for considering transferring her to alternative work.
In Inco Alloys Ltd v Kelly the EAT upholds an industrial tribunal's decision that the dismissal of an employee, because he twice attended evening Territorial Army training sessions having been off work the same day because of sickness or injury, was unfair.
An employee was fairly dismissed when he lost his driving licence, holds the EAT in John Liddington Ltd v Blackett, given that his job involved substantial travelling and the employer had concluded, after careful consideration of alternative arrangements, that the job could not be done properly without a car.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to unfair dismissal.