This case involves an employer that, rather than deal with problems with an employee's behaviour and attitude by giving him a series of warnings, used them as an excuse to dismiss him.
Claire Benson is managing associate and Helen Corbett, Sinead Jones, Helen Ward and Tori O'Neil are associates at Addleshaw Goddard LLP. They round up the latest rulings.
The High Court has held that art.6 of the European Convention on Human Rights was not engaged in internal disciplinary proceedings where the employee was not, as a result, deprived of the right to practise his profession.
In this unusual case, an employee was dismissed and offered reinstatement on appeal, before purportedly resigning due to the terms of the reinstatement.
In Tilson v Alstom Transport [2011] IRLR 169 CA, the Court of Appeal held that there was no basis for the employment tribunal to imply a contract of employment between an agency worker and the end user. The fact that the claimant had rejected offers of just such a permanent contract on more than one occasion was a powerful factor pointing away from an employment relationship.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has confirmed that a paid volunteer is not an employee for the purposes of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 where there is no mutuality of obligation between the parties.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that, for a dismissal to be automatically unfair under TUPE, it is not necessary for the transferor to have identified an actual prospective transferee at the time of the dismissal.
In this case, the employment tribunal held that an employer placed too much emphasis on an employee's "flippant" and "sarcastic" attitude during a disciplinary hearing and failed properly to consider the flaws in the evidence against him.