End of employment
A provision of a contract of employment, which entitled the employer to terminate the contract either by giving the employee notice or summarily on paying him in lieu of notice, did not give the employer a third option of giving no notice and making no, or less than full, payment, holds the EAT in Cerberus Software Ltd v Rowley.
In Murray and another v Foyle Meats Ltd, the House of Lords holds that the language of the statutory definition of redundancy asks two questions of fact. The first is whether or not one or other of various states of economic affairs exists, and the second is whether or not the dismissal is attributable, wholly or mainly, to that state of affairs.
An employer did not act in breach of its common law duty of care in providing a reference for a former employee which stated that, when he had taken voluntary severance, he was suspended from work because of a charge of gross misconduct, but that disciplinary proceedings had lapsed automatically when his employment terminated, holds the Court of Appeal in Bartholomew v London Borough of Hackney.
Damages for wrongful dismissal may in principle include damages in respect of an employee's loss of the opportunity to bring an unfair dismissal complaint, holds the EAT in Raspin v United News Shops Ltd.
In Francisco HernandezVidal SA v Gomez Perez and others [1999] IRLR 132 ECJ, the European Court of Justice held that, for the purposes of EC Business Transfers Directive 77/187, an organised grouping of wage earners who are specifically and permanently assigned to a common task may, in the absence of other factors of production, amount to an economic entity.
In Hill v General Accident Fire and Life Assurance Corporation plc, the Outer House of the Court of Session holds that there was no breach of the implied duty of mutual trust and confidence when an employer made an employee redundant while he was in receipt of contractual sick pay and had a prospective contractual entitlement to long-term sickness benefit.
Employees who are dismissed by the transferor of an undertaking, and then re-engaged by the transferee on different but agreed terms, are not entitled to retain the benefit of their previous terms of employment, holds the House of Lords in Wilson and others v St Helens Borough Council and Baxendale and Meade v British Fuels Ltd.
In the absence of an express contractual term entitling a bookmaker to send the senior dealer in its spread-betting business on garden leave, it was under an obligation to allow him to perform the duties of the post to which it had appointed him in accordance with his contract both during his notice period and before he gave in his notice, holds the Court of Appeal in William Hill Organisation Ltd v Tucker.
An employee's contract of employment continued after an exchange of letters between the employee, giving one month's notice of termination, and her employer, confirming that it did not want her to work out her notice period and that her salary would be paid in lieu at the end of the notice period, holds the Court of Appeal in Hutchings v Coinseed Ltd.
In Caledonia Bureau Investment & Property v Caffrey, the EAT holds that the automatically unfair dismissal provision which protects a woman against dismissal for a reason "connected with her pregnancy" is not limited to dismissals occurring during the period of pregnancy and maternity leave.
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