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- Date:
- 19 March 1985
- Type:
- Employment law cases
In Birch and Humber v University of Liverpool the Court of Appeal upholds a tribunal's finding that the termination of employment which resulted from the employees' offer to retire early and the employer's acceptance of that offer was not a dismissal but a termination by mutual agreement; so, there having been no dismissal, the employees were not entitled to a redundancy payment.
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- Date:
- 21 August 1984
- Type:
- Employment law cases
The EAT can overturn industrial tribunal decisions on the ground either that there has been an error of law, or that the decision was perverse. In Dobie v Burns International Security Services (UK) Ltd, the Court of Appeal holds that these are alternative not cumulative reasons for allowing an appeal.
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- Date:
- 8 February 1983
- Type:
- Employment law cases
The Court of Appeal has established that if words of dismissal or resignation are unambiguous, they cannot be overridden by appeals to what a reasonable employee or employer might have taken them to mean. J & J Stern v Simpson the EAT holds that that does not mean that the words must initially be viewed in isolation, but that the surrounding circumstances are relevant to whether the words used are ambiguous.
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- Date:
- 8 February 1983
- Type:
- Employment law cases
Whether or not words of dismissal uttered in the heat of the moment can be retracted quickly has in the past been left undecided by the Court of Appeal and the EAT. In Martin v Yeomen Aggregates Ltd the EAT, in a rather unsatisfactory judgment, appears to hold that immediate retraction of a summary dismissal is possible in law.
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- Date:
- 19 October 1982
- Type:
- Employment law cases
In Iceland Frozen Foods v Jones the EAT has reviewed the decisions on the test of reasonableness as required by s.57(3) of the EP(C)A. They stress the importance of considering the range of reasonable responses and warn against the test which states that a dismissal is unfair only if no sensible or reasonable employer could have arrived at that decision, as this approach could result in a misunderstanding of the law.
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- Date:
- 1 July 1982
- Type:
- Employment law cases
In Tayside Regional Council v McIntosh [1982] IRLR 272 EAT, the EAT held that a requirement for "qualifications" need not be expressly stated in a contract of employment, as it may be inferred from the job advertisement or from the nature of the job.
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- Date:
- 1 April 1982
- Type:
- Employment law cases
In Evans v Elemeta Holdings Ltd [1982] IRLR 143 EAT, the EAT emphasises that whether it is reasonable to dismiss an employee for refusing to accept a change in contractual terms depends upon whether it was reasonable for the employee to decline the terms. If it was reasonable for the employee to decline those terms, then it is unreasonable for the employer to dismiss the employee for such refusal.
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- Date:
- 31 December 1981
- Type:
- Employment law cases
In Ross v Delrosa Caterers Ltd [1981] ICR 393 EAT, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that, although continuity of employment is broken where a redundancy payment has been paid to an employee and the contract of employment is renewed or the employee re-engaged under a new contract, this is the case only if the redundancy payment is a statutory redundancy payment.
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- Date:
- 1 June 1981
- Type:
- Employment law cases
In Sothern v Franks Charlesly & Co [1981] IRLR 278 CA, the Court of Appeal held that the words "I am resigning" are not ambiguous, so that a reasonable employer would not have interpreted the words when used by the respondent employee as a resignation in the circumstances of the present case.
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- Date:
- 22 May 1981
- Type:
- Employment law cases
The Court of Appeal's decision in Alidair Ltd v Taylor is authority for the proposition that there are circumstances in which an employee's incompetence can be so great that it is unnecessary to give him an opportunity to improve. The effect of the Court of Appeal's more recent decision in Inner London Education Authority v Lloyd, however, is to limit the application of the Alidair case. Rejecting an analogy of the case of Mr Lloyd, a probationary teacher, to that of Mr Taylor, an airline pilot, the Appeal Court points out that in Alidair the safety of a large number of people was involved.