Miscellaneous

Employer not liable for employee's data breach

An employer was not vicariously liable for the actions of one of its employees who, to damage his employer, leaked personal staff data on a file-sharing website.

CCTV surveillance and the right to privacy

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

Privilege: don't be tempted to cherry pick

An employer had waived privilege in advice about dismissal and so couldn’t cherry pick which parts of the advice it disclosed.

Employee shareholder status

Someone who validly becomes an ‘employee shareholder’ did not revert to ‘employee’ status when he later concluded a service agreement with his employer.

Illegality and breach of immigration rules

A breach of the immigration rules did not mean that an employment contract was unenforceable.

AWR do not confer right to same contractual hours of work

An agency worker’s right to equal treatment in relation to the ‘duration of working time’ under the Agency Workers Regulations does not entitle him or her to the same number of contractual hours as a directly recruited comparator.

Making covert recordings at work

An employee making a covert recording at work may be guilty of misconduct.

Dismissal based on employee's phone data did not engage art. 8 of the ECHR

An employee’s right to privacy was not breached when his employer relied on data found on his phone during a police investigation into allegations of harassment against the employee by another colleague.

Employer not liable for injury at Christmas party

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.

Personal liability of directors

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

Suspension of employee not presumed repudiatory breach

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.

Employer liable for injury to employee at impromptu work party

An employer was vicariously liable for life-changing injuries inflicted by its managing director on one of its employees at a Christmas party.

Tribunals can interpret contracts in unauthorised deductions claims

Faced with deciding whether a sum is ‘properly payable’ for the purposes of an unauthorised deduction claim, a tribunal does have jurisdiction to interpret contractual terms.

'Same type of contract' for part-time worker comparison

A permanent, full-time employee was employed under the ‘same type of contract’ as a part-time employee on a zero-hours contract for the purposes of the Part-time Workers Regulations.

References and negative opinions

Except where there is a ‘red flag’ prompting further inquiry, such as an obvious error in the material or where information has come to light which casts a doubt on the reliability or integrity of the facts or opinions in the underlying material, there was no duty to examine the procedural fairness of investigations upon which facts and opinions in a reference were based.

Higher pay cannot offset inferior holiday entitlement under AWR

Providing an agency worker with 28 days’ holiday and half-hour rest breaks when comparable permanent employees were entitled to 30.5 days’ holiday and rest breaks of one hour breached the Agency Workers Regulations (AWR).

False dismissal reason is breach of trust and confidence

The implied term of trust and confidence may be breached if an employer misleads an employee about the reason for their dismissal.

Monitoring of employees' personal communications at work

Where an employer had a ban on personal use of company equipment and an employee denied using an e-mail account for personal reasons, it was a breach of his right to a private life for his employer to access that personal account to disprove what he was saying.

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