End of employment
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In Rowan v Machinery Installations (South Wales) Ltd [1981] IRLR 122 EAT, the EAT held that the Industrial Tribunal had erred in finding that the appellant's period of continuous employment had been broken when his contract of employment had been terminated by the respondents and he was paid an amount calculated in accordance with the statutory redundancy payment provisions, in circumstances in which there was no liability on the respondents to make a redundancy payment.
In Gardiner v London Borough of Merton [1980] IRLR 472 CA, the Court of Appeal held that where an individual leaves the employ of one authority and joins another he or she will lose all rights of continuity of employment except for those that may be provided for under the Redundancy Payments (Continuity of Employment etc) (Modification) Order 1999.
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