Employment Law Advocates

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 what would have been the notice period, and consequently recovers more than the amount lost. The reason for this is that it is deemed to be good industrial practice to make a payment in lieu of notice in this situation. The Employment Appeal Tribunal in Stuart Peters v Bell had rejected the arguments made by Rad that there is no equivalent principle for a constructive dismissal, but this decision was overturned by a panel that included Lord Justice Elias.

The judgment has not yet been produced and will appear on this blog as soon as it does. However, the primary reason for the decision is that it is not, as a rule, good industrial practice to pay in lieu of notice when an employee resigns. It does not follow from Norton Tool that an employee who has been unfairly dismissed is always entitled to receive notice pay, which would amount to a bonus, and there must be an asssessment of what is actually good industrial practice in the circumstances of a particular case.