Contracts of employment

New and updated

• Date:

  1 December 2004

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Horkulak v Cantor Fitzgerald International

  In Horkulak v Cantor Fitzgerald International [2004] IRLR 942 CA, the Court of Appeal held that, even where the employment contract states that payment of a bonus is discretionary, the employer is under an implied duty to exercise that discretion genuinely and rationally, and a wrongfully dismissed employee could recover damages that reflect the bonus payments that he could have expected to receive had he remained in employment.

• Date:

  26 November 2004

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Fixed-term employees: Terminable contract still fixed-term

  In Allen v National Australia Group Europe Ltd, the EAT holds that the tribunal was wrong to decline jurisdiction to hear a claim under the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002.

• Date:

  1 November 2004

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Soteriou v Ultrachem Ltd and others

  In Soteriou v Ultrachem Ltd and others [2004] IRLR 870 HC, the High Court held that the EAT had not erred in striking out the applicant's claim for wrongful dismissal on the basis that an employment tribunal had already determined on a claim for unfair dismissal that the applicant's contract of employment was unenforceable due to illegality and that, since the claim for wrongful dismissal involved the same contract, the EAT was bound by that finding.

• Date:

  22 October 2004

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Contracts of employment: Duty to disclose own breach of fiduciary obligation

  In Tesco Stores Ltd v Pook the High Court holds that that a secret receipt of payment through fraudulent invoices by a senior employee, as a bribe from a company doing business with his employer, gave rise to a conflict of interest and was tantamount to a secret commission.

• Type:

  FAQs

  Does it matter if an employee's written statement of terms and conditions of employment is out of date?

• Date:

  24 September 2004

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Damages: Pre-dismissal psychiatric injury claims can proceed

  In Eastwood and another v Magnox Electric plc; McCabe v Cornwall County Council and others, the House of Lords holds that, in cases where psychiatric injury is alleged to have been caused by acts of the employer committed prior to, and separately from the act of dismissal itself, a cause of action will exist at common law for damages.

• Type:

  FAQs

  What contractual terms will exist between an employer and its employees with regard to health and safety?

• Date:

  3 September 2004

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Discrimination: Employee's illegal acts prevent race discrimination remedy

  In V v Addey & Stanhope School, the Court of Appeal holds that the extent of the employee's illegal and criminal conduct was such that it prevented him from pursuing a race discrimination claim.

• Date:

  2 July 2004

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Contracts of employment: Collectively "agreed" variation to terms not valid

  In South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council v Graham, the EAT holds that a "local agreement", for the purposes of the National Joint Council for Local Government Employees' collective bargaining agreement, should be construed as meaning either an agreement by all the locally recognised trade unions, or an agreement that has been determined by a process agreed by all the recognised unions.

• Date:

  21 May 2004

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Damages: EDT is end of statutory notice in summary dismissals

  In Harper v Virgin Net Ltd the Court of Appeal holds under s.97(2) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, where an employee is summarily dismissed, that employee's effective date of termination ("EDT") is only extended to the end of the statutory notice period to which he or she would have been entitled, and not to the end of their contractual notice period.