Employment Law Cases

The EAT re-examines the current legal position surrounding the retraction of a resignation made in the heat of the moment. Subjective intention is irrelevant and a reasonable bystander test applies.

A contractual clause requiring an employee who had given notice to repay a discretionary bonus was not a restraint of trade, and the employer was entitled to rely on it and receive the repayment.

An employer treated an employee unfavourably because of something arising from her disability of menopause and failed to make reasonable adjustments.

Historic holiday pay claims can be brought even where there is a correct payment or a gap of three months or more between a series of underpayments.

The right to participate in a share incentive plan transferred to a new employer under TUPE, even though the employee’s entitlement to participate in the plan arose under an agreement separate from and not referred to in his contract of employment.

An employer’s failure fully to enquire into a dyspraxic job applicant’s needs when he was applying online led to a finding of disability discrimination for failure to make reasonable adjustments.

An employee was not unfairly dismissed when his employer extended his termination date multiple times to give him a chance to return to work from sickness absence.

An employee’s contract had been terminated by the employer’s unilateral imposition of new terms and conditions.

The lack of a meeting between an employee and the dismissing officer will not in and of itself, in all circumstances, make a dismissal unfair.

Only unwanted conduct of which a claimant is aware can be taken into account in a claim for harassment.

‘Gender-critical’ beliefs, including a belief that biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity, are protected under the Equality Act and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Employers cannot discipline an employee for manifesting a protected belief because someone else may be offended - unless they have also considered whether the action is both necessary and proportionate.

A decision to dismiss based on tainted information given by a line manager to the dismissing manager could not make the dismissal discriminatory unless the dismissing manager was motivated by the relevant protected characteristic (here pregnancy).

When calculating pay for accrued but untaken statutory holiday at the end of employment under the Working Time Regulations, an employment contract (or other agreement) cannot stipulate a formula for calculating that holiday pay which would result in a worker being paid less than the usual amount they would have been paid for working.

An employee made redundant in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic was unfairly dismissed because her employer hadn’t considered furloughing her as an alternative to redundancy.

An employee’s furlough pay can be calculated in accordance with the terms agreed upon by the employer and employee through a variation in the employee’s contractual terms. The formula set out in the Treasury Directions governing the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) was not mandatory for employers to use and did not supersede existing employment law rights and obligations.

A congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses was not vicariously liable for the rape of a member of its congregation by a former elder. While the relationship between the elder was akin to employment, the rape was not so closely connected with what the elder was authorised to do that it could fairly and properly be regarded as committed by him while acting in the course of his quasi-employment.

A letter amounted to an effective letter of termination for the purposes of an unfair dismissal claim, despite the letter being marked ‘without prejudice.’

The High Court has refused to strike out a claim for misuse of private information which was brought by an employee against her former employer. In so doing, the court considered the extent to which there can be a reasonable expectation of privacy in private WhatsApp messages that had been found at work.

A disabled employee’s dismissal was not discrimination arising from a disability because it was a proportionate means of achieving the employer’s legitimate aim of maintaining good staff attendance.