An employer was not liable in negligence for an injury occasioned to one of its employees at the staff Christmas party; neither was it vicariously liable.

Directors of a limited company can, in certain circumstances, be personally liable for inducing a company to breach an employment contract.

The adverse treatment of a gay head teacher amounted to constructive dismissal and sexual orientation discrimination.

Although a breach of the Working Time Regulations cannot lead to an injury to feelings award, compensation can reflect personal injury suffered as a consequence of the breach.

An employer does not usually need to wait for the conclusion of criminal proceedings before starting or continuing with internal disciplinary proceedings.

The disciplining of an employee for refusal to obey a lawful instruction (due to a mistaken belief it would impact on her disability) was not unfavourable treatment due to something arising from a disability.

The dismissal of an employee on the day of a TUPE transfer because her new employer foresaw ongoing problems with a fellow employee was automatically unfair under TUPE.

Sending an important letter about redundancies to a woman on maternity leave to a work email account which she could not access could be unfavourable treatment under the Equality Act. But whether it was also maternity discrimination depends upon the reasons why that treatment occurred.

EAT clarifies how to interpret ‘long term’ for the purpose of the definition of disability.

Protection from dismissal for asserting a statutory right only applies where the employee alleged an actual breach of statute, not a threatened one.

Where a worker is entitled, under the Working Time Regulations, to ‘compensatory rest’ instead of a 20-minute uninterrupted rest break, the rest need not, in every case, consist of an uninterrupted 20 minutes, even if it would, in principle, be possible to provide such a break.

Suspension can be a breach of contract – but on each occasion it is a question of fact. A tribunal must consider whether the employer has ‘reasonable and proper cause’ to suspend, not whether it was ‘necessary’ to suspend the employee.

The dismissal of a teacher at an ultra-orthodox Jewish nursery who refused to lie about living with her boyfriend was not discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief.

European law obliges employers to establish a system for recording actual daily working time for full-time workers who have not expressly agreed to work overtime according to the Advocate General of the ECJ.

For the purposes of equal pay law, two distinct parts of a workforce (here female shop floor workers and higher-paid male distribution centre workers) can compare their pay, even if they are located at different sites, in different parts of the organisation/group, and with very different pay arrangements/management structures.

A worker’s complaint to HR that he was being defamed by rumours that he had breached confidentiality was capable of amounting to a protected disclosure under the whistleblowing provisions of the Employment Rights Act.

A ‘conduct’ dismissal can encompass serious neglect, omission or carelessness - here a failure to meet the role’s requirements.

Whilst periods of short-time working may reduce the minimum period of statutory leave to less than four weeks, they cannot reduce the amount off pay due when leave is taken – and overtime doesn’t necessarily have to be included in the calculation of holiday pay.

An employee with at least one month’s - but less than two months’ - continuous employment had a right to a written statement of employment particulars.

A disabled employee who had reduced his hours from full time to part time before taking ill-health retirement had not been treated ‘unfavourably’ when an element of his pension benefits was calculated by reference to his part-time salary at the date of retirement.