Employment Law Cases

A separate investigatory hearing and disciplinary hearing is not required in every case by right.

Ethical veganism’ can be a ‘philosophical belief’ and therefore protected in law.

A delivery courier was a ‘worker’ despite his agreement containing what purported to be a substitution clause.

An employer’s unreasonable disciplinary investigation breached the implied term of trust and confidence which entitled the employee to resign and successfully claim unfair constructive dismissal.

Where someone has been dismissed and then subsequently reinstated, this does not prevent them from subsequently bringing a detriment claim under the Equality Act.

There is no implied term that salary details are confidential.

In upholding a tribunal’s decision to dismiss all an employee’s claims, the Court of Appeal provide useful guidance on fair conduct procedures and rescuing appeals.

In a potentially very significant departure from accepted orthodoxy, a tribunal has held that TUPE applies to ‘workers’ as well as to traditional ‘employees’

Where the real reason for dismissal of a worker is because they made a protected disclosure and that fact has been hidden from the decision-maker by a person in the ‘hierarchy of responsibility above the employee’, the dismissal is automatically unfair, even though the decision-maker has relied upon an invented reason for dismissal in good faith.

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.

An employee was automatically unfairly dismissed because of his union activities even though neither the manager conducting the disciplinary hearing nor the manager who dismissed the appeal were motivated by prejudice against the employee because of his union activities.

Whether notification that a role was being deleted amounted to a communication that the contract was being terminated on that date had to be determined in light of the wider context and all the facts of the particular case.

Shop workers’ right to privacy was not breached when a supermarket relied on covertly recorded CTV images to dismiss them for theft.

Lying about the reason for dismissal and later amending one’s defence to include the true reason is likely to shift the burden of proof in a discrimination case.

An employer did not discriminate when it dismissed an employee who refused to sign a copyright agreement because she held a ‘philosophical belief’ that she should own the rights to her work.

Excluding judges – and all office holders – from whistleblowing protection is a breach of their human rights.

Changes to an investigator’s report into potential misconduct, made at the suggestion of an in-house lawyer, did not render an employee’s subsequent dismissal unfair

Statutory redundancy pay doesn’t count towards the £25,000 cap on contractual claims in the employment tribunal as it is a separate cause of action – one is contractual and subject to a £25,000 cap and the other is statutory which is not subject to the cap.

A worker, who had been denied a rest break and who was subsequently threatened with dismissal following his refusal to return to work, suffered an unlawful detriment.

Vegetarianism is a ‘lifestyle choice’ and, as such, not a belief which qualifies for protection under the Equality Act.