The judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in McFarlane v Relate Avon is another in a long line of authorities in which discrimination on the grounds of religion and sexual orientation have appeared to come into conflict. In such cases, there is often unhelpful talk about one set of rights ‘trumping’ another but this just misses the point. In McFarlane, Justice

The Employment Appeal Tribunal decision in Yorkshire Maintenance Company v Farr concerned penalty clauses in employment contracts, an area of law in which there are surprisingly few authorities. The respondent had attempted to rely upon a clause stating that wages could be deducted in the event that timesheets were not signed by the client. The tribunal did not accept this, not expressly

An article in the Guardian reports on a fascinating case which began at the Manchester Employment Tribunal earlier in the week. It represents part of the fallout from the construction industry blacklist which I discussed in this post. Now many of the people affected (twenty three of them) have brought claims against the companies who put their names on the list in

The Court of Appeal decision in Royal Bank of Scotland v Allen concerns the provision of goods and services under the Disability Discrimination Act. The case turned largely on its facts and was decided using the existing authorities about the meaning of a ‘reasonable alternative method’ of providing the service. However, there was one point which could later become relevant in an employment

The decision in Orr v Milton Keynes Council gets to the heart of a very difficult area of discrimination law, usually described as causation, but this is itself a problematic term, as the case demonstrates. The claimant suffered harassment for which his employer was vicariously liable, but was dismissed fairly for his rude and abusive response to it. It was held that the

I was delighted to discover last week that a case I conducted, Tapere v South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, which I discussed in this post, has been reported in the Industrial Relations Law Reports at [2009] IRLR 972. It was analysed by Michael Rubenstein in his ‘Highlights’ section but I must admit that I found his reasoning rather odd.  He said, ‘However laudable

Since Malcolm, the issue of knowledge of a disability has gained a great deal of importance because it is a requirement for a successful claim for a failure to make reasonable adjustments, which is now the most important head of claim. It has also become a requirement for disability-related discrimination in the unlikely event that

Judgment has now also been given by the Employment Appeal Tribunal in this case, further to my earlier discussion of the submissions here. The outcome, that a passionate belief in climate change, accompanied by a moral imperative to do something about it, is capable of constituting a philosophical belief for the purpose of the Religion or Belief Regulations, is

The Court of Appeal judgment, which I first discussed in this post, has now been made available online.