August 2009 Archives - Employment Law Advocates

Christmas and New Year Office Closure

01-Dec-2011 / Employment Law Advocates / Comments Off

Our office will be closing for the holiday period at 12.00pm on Friday 23rd December 2011 and will reopen again until 10.00am on Tuesday 3rd January 2012. Advocates will be mostly unavailable but may have intermittent access to email or telephone during this period. If you are an existing client, please contact your Advocate directly by email or telephone. If you are a new client or are seeking advice, please email info@employmentlawadvocates.com or complete the enquiry form on our Contact Us page ...

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Effective date of termination

26-Aug-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

The case of Gisda Cyf v Barratt concerns the thorny issue which arises when a dismissal letter is sent to an employee but is not read until several days later. A well-established principle was set down by the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Brown v Southall & Knight, as long ago as 1980, but it came under challenge for the first time in the Court of Appeal. The majority upheld its ratio that, so long as there is no deliberate avoidance ...

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Dark law – amendments

24-Aug-2009 / James Medhurst / 1 Comment

The approach of tribunals towards amendments is increasingly liberal, especially¬†if no new facts are pleaded. However, a difficulty remains in situations where an amendment is requested at the hearing itself. It is particularly prejudicial for a respondent to be faced with an allegation for which it has not prepared but, conversely, justice demands that¬†a claim should not be defeated by the technicality of pleadings, in what is supposed to be a jurisdiction accessible to all. The overriding objective provides the ...

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Riam Dean judgment

20-Aug-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

I am delighted to announce¬†something of an exclusive for the Employment Law Advocates blog. Please click here¬†to read the written reasons¬†of the most famous (or rather¬†infamous for Abercrombie & Fitch) employment tribunal case of the year.¬†I would like to thank¬†May¬†Dean for providing me with a copy. There is one finding of fact which is not strictly relevant to the case but nevertheless reveals¬†a lot about the culture of the American¬†store.¬†One of the¬†terms of¬†a settlement with ethnic minority employees was to increase ...

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TUPE and mobility clauses

19-Aug-2009 / James Medhurst / 1 Comment

As promised, a summary of my recent appearance at the Employment Appeal Tribunal appears below. The case of Tapere v South London and Maudsley NHS Trust concerns the scope of Regulation 4(9) of the TUPE Regulations 2006, which allows a person to resign and treat her contract of employment as having been terminated if there is a substantial change in working conditions to her material detriment. It also makes some observations about the scope of mobility clauses and the effect of ...

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Disability + non-disability = what?

17-Aug-2009 / James Medhurst / No Comments

An intriguing but under-analysed problem is how to deal with a situation in which some symptoms of a medical condition would be able to qualify as a disability but others, in themselves,¬†would not, such as¬†a psychological condition resulting in impaired understanding but also a tendency to steal.¬†If the tendency to steal were the only symptom, it would be an excluded condition that is deemed not to qualify as a disability¬†and, as the education case of X Endowed Primary School v ...

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