Since the ruling of the European Court of Justice in the Stringer case last year, several employees have been claiming holiday pay for periods of sickness going back a number of years. This seems unfair on employers for a number of reasons. Firstly, the employers would not have been aware at the time that holiday pay was likely to be owed. Secondly,

A common complaint by employees is that they have been given poor references by their employers after having been dismissed, often as retaliation for bringing claims against them. However, it is difficult to claim compensation for such action at the Employment Tribunal, as illustrated by a recent decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, Brown v Careham Hall.
A care worker was dismissed by her

The recent judgment of the European Court of Justice in Bulicke v Deutsche Buero Service reaches the unsurprising conclusion that the existence of national time limits for submitting discrimination claims does not, in itself, prevent European law from being effective. However, the reasoning applied in the case is interesting and could well have an impact on the way

The judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal of Willoughby v C F Capital reviews and applies the law about retracting unambiguous words of dismissal. It confirms, in line with the authorities, that such words can only be retracted if they were uttered in the heat of the moment and if the retraction takes place immediately after a short cooling-off

The Court of Appeal has given its judgment in the highly topical case of Gibb v Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, concerning a rather large termination payment to a senior civil servant, in circumstances in which it was alleged that poor management had contributed to the outbreak of a hospital superbug. Although the Trust had authorised

The judgment of the Court of Appeal has now been published. The reasoning is pretty much as anticipated in my previous post – there is no mention of human rights at all. Indeed, if anything, its ratio is narrower because Lord Chief Justice Judge says that a liberal approach to the notification requirements could not be taken when informing an

Although most of the media did not pick up on the case until last week, now that it has been listed for a pre-hearing review, it turns out that Emma Czikai’s claim was lodged in January. A report in the Guardian gives an insight into the argument being run about employment status, based around the national tour which takes place

Yesterday, it was reported that a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent has launched an Employment Tribunal claim for disability discrimination against Simon Cowell and his production company. There will be a pre-hearing review to determine whether there is a sufficient employment relationship between the parties. The case has echoes of a decision in France last year in which

It is a principle of the civil courts that new evidence can be considered in an appeal against a decision, so long as certain criteria are met, which were set out in the case of Ladd v Marshall. These criteria are that the evidence could not, with reasonable diligence, have been introduced below, that it would have had an important

There has been much reporting of a US case in which a female banker is alleged to have been dismissed for being too attractive. She says that she was asked to wear less provocative clothing, a request which she considered to be sexual harassment. Three months after making a complaint, she was moved to another branch

There has been a great deal of coverage about the case of Edwards v Chesterfield Royal Hospital, which undoubtedly has the potential to result in larger claims for breaches of contractual disciplinary procedures. However, the impact is not likely to be quite as wide as has been reported in quite a few sources. A close reading of the judgment will show that it will not

As is now being widely reported, the Unite union has won its appeal to the Court of Appeal against the injunction obtained by British Airways preventing strike action. Unfortunately, the media coverage of the legal reasoning itself has been slight, which is a shame for a case that has the potential to be extremely important. There had

There was recently a remarkable case in which a City law firm, Eversheds, was found to have discriminated against a male associate solicitor who had been selected for redundancy ahead of a colleague who was on maternity leave. One of the criteria was performance and she had been given the highest possible score on the grounds that she had been away from

The recent decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Southern Cross Healthcare v Perkins deals with a number of issues, some of which are quite obscure, but one point arises from it that is of fundamental importance. This concerns the circumstances in which a tribunal can determine claims that have not been expressly pleaded, creating an exception to

The Court of Appeal has refused permission to appeal in McFarlane v Relate Avon. The reasons were straightforward, as the case cannot be distinguished from Ladele, which was decided a few months ago. However, the judgment is noteworthy for a bizarre intervention by Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, which led Lord Justice Laws to

The judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Burton, McEvoy and Webb v Curry is a brilliant and extremely useful clarification of the decision of the Court of Appeal in Buckland v Bournemouth University, discussed here. It fills in most of the gaps and answers most of the questions begged by the earlier case.
Firstly, at paragraph

The Equality Bill has been given Royal Assent and is now the Equality Act 2010. However, it will be up to a Minister of the Crown to decide when most of it is brought into force. Depending on which party wins the election, this means that some of it may never be brought into force at all. This

As a general rule, tribunals do not have jurisdiction to hear claims of unfair dismissal which are brought by employees who have worked for less than a year. There are a few statutory exceptions and they can bring discrimination claims however long their service. In my experience, claimants overestimate the value of such claims, ignoring the fact

The Employment Appeal Tribunal decision in Jobcentre Plus v Whyment-McCarthy raises what, on the face of it, looks like an interesting point. It was argued for the respondent that the tribunal had fallen into error by asking itself whether the claimant had been treated less favourably than a comparator while considering the explanation of the respondent, rather than at

If you would like to read the lastest update on this case, please visit the news section of the website.

The judgment of the Court of Appeal in Sarkar v West London Mental Health NHS Trust is interesting in that it agrees with the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal as to the law but disagrees as to the outcome of the case. The employer had initially treated the misconduct of the claimant as being minor and

Surprisingly, in nearly six months of operation, the new Supreme Court has yet to give judgment in an employment law case, but its helpful website reveals that there are currently four cases pending before it. O’Brien v Ministry of Justice, which concerns whether tribunal judges are employees for the purposes of the Part-Time Worker Regulations, is due

The Mail on Sunday is running a front page story about a meat supplier which advertised for workers with the requirement that they be fluent in Polish. Like any language requirement case, the first thing to say is that this cannot be direct discrimination against English people because there are a small number of English people who are

It is common practice for tribunals to rule on liability first and then to determine remedy later. In my experience, this can often be more trouble than it is worth, especially in short unfair dismissal cases, particularly where the issues of a Polkey reduction or of contributory fault are likely to come into play. This was

If the burden of proof reverses in a discrimination case, the employer has to show a non-discriminatory reason for the treatment about which the complaint has been made. Sometimes this is straightforward but the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Arhin v Enfield Primary Care Trust provides an example of a situation where it can be more difficult.

The decision of the Court of Appeal can be found here. The reasoning on the ‘curing the breach’ point is pretty much as argued in the appeal, which is set out in my previous post. On the ‘reasonable range of responses’ point, the approach of the Employment Appeal Tribunal has largely been upheld, but with a caveat, per Lord Justice Sedley, that, “It is nevertheless

I went to the Court of Appeal on Monday and I heard some fascinating arguments. It seems that the question of whether trust and confidence can be restored after being destroyed could become moot as, according to Robin White, for Professor Buckland, there is no authority for the more general proposition that a repudiatory breach of contract can be cured by

I can confirm that Buckland will be heard at the Court of Appeal tomorrow. Interestingly, there is also a permissions hearing for a cross-appeal by the university so it looks as though the range of reasonable responses point willhave to be considered to some extent although, it has to be said, Fairbrother does not appear to be

It is now time to talk about the range of reasonable responses, a frequently misunderstood concept. As the Court of Appeal made extremely clear in HSBC v Madden, ”there will be cases where there is room for reasonable disagreement among reasonable employers as to whether dismissal for the particular misconduct is a reasonable or an unreasonable response.” To

It has been reported that the House of Lords has defeated several government amendments narrowing the exemption from sexual orientation discrimination currently allowed to religious organisations. This is slightly misleading because one form of the wording rejected appears in the original draft of the bill and the only amendment since was at the request of church leaders, to

In Buckland, Judge Clark sets out a four stage test. Firstly, is there a breach of trust and confidence? Secondly, does acceptance of that breach entitle an employee to resign, using the authority of Sharp v Western Excavating? Thirdly, is the dismissal for a potentially fair reason? Fourthly, is the dismissal fair? I want to concentrate on the second stage and

The decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Allen v Jobcentre Plus raises an interesting question. It is common practice for tribunals, when dealing with a point of whether there is a continuing act which brings claims that would otherwise be out of time within their jurisdiction, to reserve the matter to the final hearing without a pre-hearing

To start my review of constructive dismissal law, I must deal with a point of which, in my opinion, far too much has been made. In the only House of Lords decision in this area, Malik v BCCI, Lord Steyn appears to state that the test of whether there is a breach of the implied term of trust

The government recently published draft regulations aimed at restricting the use of damages-based contingency fee agreements in which the representative receives a proportion of the damages awarded to the client. They are unlawful in the United Kingdom (although not in the United States of America) for court proceedings but are quite common in Employment Tribunal proceedings,

I made quite a number of posts last year about the case of Bournemouth University v Buckland at the Employment Appeal Tribunal. I am not a fan of the decision which, among other things, says that it is wrong to introduce a range of reasonable responses test into the question of whether there has been a

The decision of the Scottish Employment Appeal Tribunal in Young v Hexion Speciality Chemicals deals with a short but important point. A claim for unfair dismissal had been submitted in which the date of termination of the employment had been provided but not the start date. It was rejected on the basis that it could not

Happy New Year everyone. For my first post of 2010, I would like to make my selection for the most important unreported case of last year. There are always significant cases that slip under the radar of the law reporters, especially if their practical usefulness outweighs their academic interest or where novel points arise about an issue peripheral to the main

In my last dark law post, I discussed the scepticism of tribunals regarding discrimination claims about acts which do not appear to be discriminatory on their face. It might be thought that the situation would have changed since it has become possible for the burden of proof to be reversed but, in fact, this has not

The Court of Appeal dealt with some complicated issues of European law in Duncombe v Department for Children, Schools and Families. It was not a good week for the Department, which also intervened unsuccessfully in JFS. Mr. Duncombe was employed to teach at a European School in Germany but was dismissed when his fixed-term contract came to an end after nine years,

The judgment of the Supreme Court in this case has been all over the newspapers. I went to see it being handed down yesterday and I was pleased both that the carpet looks much better in real life than in photographs and with the decision itself, in which thirty years of direct discrimination law narrowly avoided being overturned,

An employment tribunal does not have the jurisdiction to hear a claim if it has been subject to an agreement which complies with section 203 of the Employment Rights Act, or with a similar provision in another statute. It does have the power to determine whether an agreement properly complies with the terms of the section but it had

The single most common mistake made by inexperienced advocates and litigants in person in the Employment Tribunal is to assume that it is easy to demonstrate that an negative act by an employer was done on discriminatory grounds. For example, many think that evidence of having been bullied is sufficient even where there is no basis for suggesting that

Consider the followings two scenarios: a black person claims race discrimination on the grounds that she has wrongly been assumed to be mentally ill; and a white person claims race discrimination on the grounds that she has wrongly been assumed to be mentally ill. Even without knowing any of the facts, the first case seems

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.

When the Court of Appeal gave judgment in R (on the application of E) v The Governing Body of JFS, it was suggested to me that this might be a good topic for the blog. I did not take the opportunity to write about it then because it seemed to me that, like the vast majority of

According to Judge Peter Clark in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, in Allen v Murdoch, the statutory disciplinary and dismissal procedures apply to claims for redundancy payments and for pay in lieu of accrued holiday arising on termination and, therefore, there is no need for a grievance to be raised in respect of these matters. This

This is the week where everyone is talking about the BNP. The appearance by Nick Griffin on Question Time yesterday came shortly after he finally conceded the need to change a constitution which restricts membership on racial grounds. Frustratingly, the media coverage has not analysed the relevant law which is not as straightforward as it seems and so it

The case of Autoclenz v Belcher is the last in a long series which caused a lot of confusion but resulted in the law being in much the same position it was in when the confusion began. The story starts with the case of Consistent Group v Kalwak in the Employment Appeal Tribunal in May 2007, in

The case of Ministry of Defence v Fletcher got a great deal of media attention at first instance (see for example here), mainly because the claimant was a female soldier who was awarded £186,895.52 for sexual harassment and victimisation. Of this, £100,000 represented injury to feelings, including £30,000 for the upper band of Vento adjusted for

I had the pleasure of attending the Employment Appeal Tribunal as an observer yesterday in the case of Grainger v Nicholson, which I previously discussed here. As a result, I am now much less confident of the views which I had then. John Bowers QC, for the appellant employer, argued that the definition of a religious or

There has been an interesting recent judgment from the Court of Appeal, reversing the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Oakland v Wellswood (the link is to the now overruled judgment). The case is unusual because the insolvency issue did not arise in the context of an employee who had been made redundant immediately afterwards but

The Employment Appeal Tribunal case of Henderson v Connect (South Tyneside) is not very likely to be reported as there is not much new law in it. However, it is a nice example of a judgment which provides a useful survey of the existing authorities, in an area in which many of them are quite old and not all of them

The case of Eagle Place Services v Rudd had an unusual outcome in that the tribunal found direct disability discrimination but not disability-related discrimination. Both sides were not happy with the outcome, with the employer challenging the former finding and the employee challenging the latter. It was the cross-appeal which succeeded, with the effect that

Further to this post, I can report that the judgment of the Court of Appeal in this case is now available.

Barack Obama appeared US television this week on the Late Show with David Letterman. This followed accusations by his predecessor Jimmy Carter that criticism of his policies about healthcare reform were motivated by racism. When asked about this, Obama observed that, “I was black before the election.”
A simiar problem can arise in employment tribunal cases,

There has already been a great deal of discussion about the decision of the European Court of Justice in Pereda v Madrid Movilidad, in which it was held that workers who become sick while on holiday can reclaim their supposedly lost annual leave to be taken at a later date. Not surprisingly, much of the commentary has focused

Today, I am travelling in my DeLorean back to the year 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union, Boris Becker won Wimbledon as an unseeded 17-year-old, and the mobile phone was introduced into the UK by a tiny company called Racal-Vodaphone. Number one singles included ‘Nineteen’ by Paul Hardcastle, ‘The Power of

While I am on the subject of decisions on remedy which are upheld by the Employment Appeal Tribunal but overturned by the Court of Appeal, another example was first mentioned in this post. I am pleased to report that the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Stuart Peters v Bell has now been produced. Lord

There was an interesting decision by the Court of Appeal a few weeks ago, concerning compensation for unfair dismissal. Unfortunately, the judgment has yet to appear but the key background reading in any event is the Employment Appeal Tribunal judgment in Aegon v Roberts, earlier in the year, which it overturned. The facts are unremarkable but the

There have been very few new decisions recently but there was another case on time limits that caught my eye, McFadyen v PB Recovery, which is a reminder that employment tribunals in Scotland are a separate jurisdiction from those in England and Wales. Usually this makes no difference because the law is identical to the point that decisions of

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

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

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

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

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,

The case of Bowers v William Hill is interesting, not because it is likely to be reported but because the situation is unusual. The respondent made a concession that the claimant was disabled but the tribunal nevertheless found that her case failed, seemingly on the basis that the Respondent could not have known that her

This case is reported, among other places, in the Industrial Relations Law Reports at [2008] IRLR 302. When it appeared, it frustrated many commentators because it appeared not to resolve a conflict in the authorities between those cases in which a contract of employment was implied between an agency worker and an end user, such as Dacas

The managing director of Employment Law Advocates is Rad Kohanzad, who was involved in a dramatic case at the Court of Appeal last week. The principle from the case of Norton Tool is that compensation for an unfair summary dismissal can include the equivalent of a payment in lieu of notice, even where the dismissed employee has found another job during

Further to my discussion about Daleside Nursing Home v Mathew here, it was inevitable that the issue of costs would rear its head again. In Dunedin Canmore Housing Association v Donaldson, the Scottish Employment Appeal Tribunal followed Mathew if, that is, it is possible to follow a decision that purports to establish no principle of law. In

As I noted in my last post on this topic, it is rare to find a factor in an employment relationship that provides a knock-out point as to the nature of that relationship. However, the exception that proves the rule is tax. There is remarkably little authority on the importance of this point but my experience

It is common in Employment Tribunals for there to be an application to substitute one respondent for another, most frequently because of a mistake, but it is unusual for a tribunal to be asked to substitute the name of a claimant. These are the facts of Enterprise Liverpool v Edwards, a recent decision of the

There was an interesting story in the Daily Mail a few weeks ago in which the government was criticised for making fake applications for several jobs to find out whether candidates from ethnic minorities were being put at a disadvantage. This was done in part because of a proposed amendment to the Equality Bill that CVs should be required to exclude the

I am a big fan of the Industrial Relations Law Reports, which I find is much fresher than the Industrial Case Reports and feel it selects a better choice of cases. I still await the day when one of my cases is reported in it and I was disproportionately excited to discover the inclusion this month of Dumfries and

I did promise to report back on this case when the judgment appeared and I apologise for the fact that it has taken me a week to do so. However, this is partly due to the fact that the only really new and interesting point is obiter. This is not the first case to say that

Employment status can appear to be a very confusing issue. It proliferates authorities containing such exotic terms as ’mutuality of obligations’, the ‘control test’ and the ‘economic reality’ test. Witness statements often contain a vast shopping list of details about the nature of the employment relationship from the layout of the office  to the ownership of the company fax machine. There have been decisive shifts in the

A key role of the House of Lords is preserving consistency in the interpretation of statutes across many different areas of law. While it is sometimes criticised, containing as it does no employment lawyers, for losing sight of industrial reality, it can also provide a refreshingly straightforward approach. Such is the case in SCA Packaging v Boyle, which

The case of Nationwide Building Society v Niblett is another well-reasoned decision by Judge Richardson which will hopefully clear up some confusion about the case of Bournemouth University v Buckland that I have highlighted in a previous post. Firstly, it emphasises that the Fairbrother line of cases, which appear to bring the reasonable range of responses test into

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

In today’s Observer, Sir Stuart Rose, the CEO of M&S,  is quoted as saying that women “have never had it so good” and that “Apart from the fact that you’ve got more equality than you ever can deal with, the fact of the matter is that you’ve got real democracy and there really are no

The barristers’ chambers Cloisters is publicising the case of Fareham College v Walters, in which it was held that an employer who dismisses an employee, having failed to make reasonable adjustments, is liable for disability discrimination. This gives a new angle for claimants who are prevented by Lewisham v Malcolm from arguing that a dismissal constitutes disability-related discrimination.

The regular readers of this blog will remember this post back in March in which I discussed a TUPE case that I have been running at the Employment Appeal Tribunal. I can confirm that the hearing took place yesterday in front of Judge Hand QC. I coped well with some difficult questions from him but judgment was reserved so it will be

Last week, the House of Lords ruled in the case of McConkey v The Simon Community, concerning the Northern Irish law against discrimination on the grounds of political opinion. Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, with whom three other Law Lords agreed, held that a statutory exclusion of political opinions supporting the use of violence meant that it would be wrong to

Like dark matter, dark law is not possible to observe directly but its existence can be detected by the gravitational forces that it exerts on visible law, which are not always straightforward. Sometimes it appears as a negative, as in the case of Mercy v Northgate, which is authority for the proposition that a tribunal is not required to find bad