Unfair dismissal

New and updated

• Date:

  1 December 1999

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Harvest Press Ltd v McCaffrey

  In Harvest Press Ltd v McCaffrey [1999] IRLR 778 EAT, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that if an employee is dismissed after walking out of work because of bullying or harassment by a colleague, he or she may be protected by the health and safety provisions of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and therefore regarded as automatically unfairly dismissed.

• Date:

  1 August 1999

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Redundancy: Definition of redundancy entails factual inquiry

  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.

• Date:

  15 November 1998

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Transfer of undertakings: Dismissal by reason of transfer is effective

  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.

• Date:

  15 April 1998

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Maternity rights: Pregnancy dismissal protection applies after expiry of maternity leave

  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.

• Date:

  15 April 1998

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Redundancy: Application of reasonableness test in redundancy cases

  In Langston v Cranfield University, the EAT rules that an industrial tribunal determining a claim of unfair dismissal by reason of redundancy must consider as a matter of course whether there was unfair selection, lack of consultation or failure to seek alternative employment on the part of the employer.

• Date:

  1 January 1998

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Misconduct: Dismissal for disobeying unlawful instruction not necessarily unfair

  In Farrant v Woodroffe School, the EAT holds that a dismissal is not necessarily unfair where the reason for it was the employer's genuine but mistaken belief that the employee was refusing to obey an instruction falling within the scope of his contract of employment.

• Date:

  1 December 1997

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Goodwin v Cabletel UK Ltd

  In Goodwin v Cabletel UK Ltd [1997] IRLR 665 EAT, the EAT held that the industrial tribunal had erred in holding that the dismissal of the appellant "designated employee" could not fall within the protection against dismissal for carrying out activities in connection with preventing or reducing risks to health and safety at work provided by the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act because it was the way in which he carried out his health and safety activities, rather than the actual doing of them, which led to his dismissal.

• Date:

  1 November 1997

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Asserting statutory rights: Allegation of infringement of right must be reason for dismissal

  In Mennell v Newell & Wright (Transport Contractors) Ltd, the Court of Appeal holds that an employee may have the right not to be unfairly dismissed for asserting a relevant statutory right even though the employer has not actually infringed that right.

• Date:

  15 October 1997

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Health and safety: Safety representative intended to embarrass employer

  Where a safety representative claims that he or she was subjected to a detriment for performing functions as an acknowledged health and safety representative, it is no defence for the employer to argue that the representative intended to embarrass the company in front of the external safety authorities or performed those functions in an unreasonable way unacceptable to the employer, holds the EAT in Shillito v Van Leer (UK) Ltd.

• Date:

  1 October 1997

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Redundancy: Factual test for determining place of employment approved

  The question of where an employee was employed for the purposes of the statutory definition of redundancy is to be answered primarily by a consideration of the factual circumstances which obtained until the dismissal, holds the Court of Appeal in High Table Ltd v Horst and others.