Like everyone else, I have been rather fascinated by the case that was heard in the London Central Employment Tribunal last week in which a law student who is missing an arm from birth brought a claim against Abercrombie & Fitch alleging disability discrimination. This case has it all - glamour, intrigue and cardigans! The fact that she has received so much support from the usually disability-lukewarm media
There will be more dark law soon but I am starting a new feature today which looks at decisions from the history of employment law. Many are forgotten but they sometimes have an unexpected relevance for the controversies of today. The first year I have selected is 1998, when the first appellate cases on the Disability Discrimination
The fascinating case of Hartlepool Borough Council v Llewellyn concerns an issue which surprisingly has not been resolved in nearly forty years since the Equal Pay Act was passed, which is whether men who carry out the same work as women who are successful in equal pay claims can bring their own claims under the Act, using
I was very pleased to read this story on the BBC News website, which confirms that Cheltenham Borough Council has lost its ludicrously expensive and potentially vexatious claim against its former managing director, Christine Laird. In fighting the case, the council has spent an amount close to the £1 million it was claiming and was ordered to pay a
This article in the Daily Telegraph concerns a Barclays Bank employee who was paid £19,000 a year for three years when she should have received a salary of £9,500. An Employment Tribunal in Ashford ruled, firstly, that she does not have to return the overpayment and, secondly, that she should continue to be paid the higher amount. It is unfortunate that
Medical evidence is often required by Employment Tribunals, from short letters by GPs to explain why a person failed to turn up to a hearing, to detailed expert reports in order to establish whether a person qualifies for protection under the Disability Discrimination Act. There is case law which indicates that tribunals should not substitute their view for that
The case of Knight v Treherne Care & Consultancy is primarily about unfair dismissal but there is also a point about the Employment Appeal Tribunal Practice Direction and the procedure within it for agreeing a record of the hearing below. In civil law, an appellant is entitled to receive a transcript produced by the court and, although it
Therefore, reality television contestants are employees, according to the French Supreme Court.
This Friday, I report on an intellectually worthy and interesting decision about tribunal procedure and on a story about adulterous flirtation on a tropical island. In McBride v Standards Board for England, it was held that an Employment Judge sitting alone at a case management discussion can rule that certain witnesses should be prevented from appearing at the full hearing on
The decision of the Court of Session in King v Eaton is reported in the Industrial Relations Law Reports at [1996] IRLR 199, and is one of those cases that appears to say a lot more than is in the headnote. According to the IRLR, the tribunal at first instance was entitled to find the dismissals
