Dismissal

New and updated

• Date:

  1 July 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Redundancy: Discovery of assessment forms must relate to issues raised

  In British Aerospace plc v Green, the Court of Appeal considers the guiding principles for ordering discovery of marked assessment forms in cases where redundant employees claim that they were unfairly selected.

• Date:

  1 June 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Misconduct: Inconsistent treatment not established

  An industrial tribunal was not entitled to find that allegedly inconsistent treatment of employees rendered a dismissal for misconduct unfair, holds the Court of Appeal in Paul v East Surrey District Health Authority.

• Date:

  1 May 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Unfair dismissal: Dismissal of competing employee was fair

  An employer is entitled to expect that an employee will not compete with it for contracts with existing customers, holds the EAT in Adamson v B&L Cleaning Services Ltd.

• Type:

  Employment law cases

  Narrow interpretation for new safety rights

  In Baddeley v Mehta t/a Supascoop, an industrial tribunal holds that a new right to claim unfair dismissal on grounds of health and safety does not apply to an employee who had resigned.

• Date:

  1 March 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Identified for redundancy because of IVF absence

  A woman whose absence resulting from IVF treatment was treated as part of her sickness record for redundancy purposes was unlawfully discriminated against on the grounds of sex, rules an Ashford industrial tribunal (Chair: G W Davies) in Robinson v London Borough of Greenwich.

• Date:

  1 March 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Minorities 'inferior to whites'

  It is a foreseeable consequence of discriminatory treatment that an employee will become upset and demotivated, holds a Birmingham industrial tribunal (Chair: A J McCarry) in Bains v Amber Leisure Ltd, finding that the dismissal of an ethnic minority employee for redundancy was unlawful discrimination even though he had requested it.

• Date:

  1 February 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Redundancy: Relocation clause defeats redundancy claim

  An employee who agreed to relocate but later decided not to move was not dismissed by reason of redundancy, but rather because of his intention not to comply with the relocation clause in his contract, holds the EAT in Richardson and another v Applied Imaging International Ltd.

• Date:

  1 January 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Unfair dismissal remedies: EAT addresses limits of "Polkey" reductions

  In a number of recent cases, the EAT has considered the approach industrial tribunals should take when considering reducing unfair dismissal compensation on the grounds that the unfairness was due only to "procedural" failures.

• Date:

  1 December 1994

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Duffy v Yeomans & Partners Ltd

  In Duffy v Yeomans & Partners Ltd [1994] IRLR 642 CA, the Court of Appeal held that the Industrial Tribunal had not erred in holding that the employers' failure to consult the appellant employee before dismissing him on grounds of redundancy did not render the dismissal unfair in circumstances in which, on the facts known to the employers at the time the employee was dismissed, consultation would have served no useful purpose, even though the employers had not made a deliberate decision not to consult.

• Date:

  1 December 1994

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  US citizen's dismissal discriminatory

  Rejecting a s. 41 defence, a Bury St Edmunds industrial tribunal (Chair: J Barnes) in York v Olan Mills Incorporated rules that the dismissal of a US citizen working for a US company in the UK when she refused to relocate back to the USA was unlawful race discrimination. Finding that the employee was also unfairly dismissed, the tribunal awarded compensation totalling almost £22,000.