In McMillan v Airedale NHS Foundation Trust the Court of Appeal has upheld a High Court decision that a contractual disciplinary procedure could not be interpreted as allowing the employer to increase a sanction from a written warning to dismissal when the employee, who was a doctor, appealed against the written warning. The Court of Appeal considered that implying such a power would be inconsistent with the right of appeal which was intended to benefit the employee, not for him to risk being worse off. The employee was therefore granted a permanent injunction preventing the employer from reconsidering the disciplinary sanction on appeal.

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In a case which was recently reported in the Update, and the overturned decision highlighted in June’s update, Prophet Plc v Huggett is the rather surprising High Court decision where the judge effectively re-wrote the restrictive covenant to give effect to what he thought the meaning should be – in essence, because he abhorred the way in which the employee had behaved and felt the employer was entitled to some form of remedy. The Court of Appeal has now overturned this decision, saying that it was not the role of the Judge to effectively re-write the restrictive covenant to give effect of what he thought the parties intended it to achieve. This was a 12 month non-compete restriction which, interpreted literally, afforded the employer no protection at all. The covenant specifically precluded the employee from working in connection with any products with which he was involved while working for the company – the problem being that no competitor would ever be selling the products which this particular company produced, so of course the covenant was useless. However the High Court Judge had taken it upon himself to add words which he thought gave some useful meaning to the covenant for the employer, and granted the requested injunction.

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In Mace v Ponders End International Limited the EAT has overturned a Tribunal decision that the claim should be struck out on the basis of an Unless Order which required the Claimant to “provide disclosure of all relevant documents”. The lack of clarity apparently was whether the intention was to require the Claimant to provide a list of documents (disclosure) or actual copies (inspection). The Claimant lodged a claim of unfair dismissal and the initial case management orders required a list of documents to sent, with copies if needed. The Respondent asked the Tribunal to provide an Unless Order to the Claimant since the Claimant had failed to provide his list of documents. The Tribunal duly did so, directing that the Claimant should provide “disclosure of all relevant documents” failing which his claim would be struck out. The Claimant sent some documents to the Tribunal but none to the Respondent. When the Judge saw the file the day before the Unless Order expired she sent an urgent message to the Claimant saying “he must get a copy of everything he has” to the Respondent by the following day. Since the Claimant neglected to do so, the claim was struck out.

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In a case which has been reported in the Update as it has made its way through the lower Courts, Hounga v Allen and another has now reached the Supreme Court. The case concerned the illegal immigrant who brought claims for race discrimination and unfair dismissal when she was abused and sacked from her position as an au pair. The Court of Appeal had previously overturned the EAT decision that the Claimant could not bring claims of race discrimination and being dismissed for a discriminatory reason because her contract was illegal and to allow her to bring claims on the back of an illegal contract would be to condone the illegality.

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In Reynolds v CLFIS (UK) Limited and others, the EAT have overturned the decision of an Employment Tribunal and remitted the case back to a fresh Tribunal on the matter of whether, in terminating the consultancy agreement of a consultant aged 73, the appropriate individuals’ motivations for the termination had been properly considered. The EAT held that the Tribunal had been wrong to focus solely on the motivation of the manager who terminated the agreement but should have taken into account the thought processes of other managers who had influence over the decision once the burden of proof shifted to the employer to demonstrate that there was no discrimination.

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In another case, similar to Whittlestone v BJP Home Support Limited, reported in a recent edition of the Update, the case of Esparon t/a Middle West Residential Care Home v Slavikovska is another case on payment of the national minimum wage where care workers reside overnight at their place of work during a night shift.

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In an interesting and not uncontroversial EAT decision, which may yet be the subject of further appeal, Panayiotou v Chief Constable of Hampshire Police holds that the way in which the employee behaved in disclosing and pursuing his whistleblowing allegations was a fair reason for his dismissal which was not connected to the fact of his whistleblowing. His judgment differs from the decision by the EAT in Woodhouse v West North West Homes Leeds Limited where the EAT held that it would be “an exceptional case” where the disclosure of the protected acts could not be said to cause the detriment concerned. In the current case the judge took the view that there was no additional requirement for the circumstances to be exceptional, because here the way in which the disclosures were pursued was unacceptable to the employer and thus the reason for dismissal.

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A consultation on proposals by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) that would allow the department to recover tax and tax credits directly from debtors’ bank accounts without the need for a court order has been criticised by lawyers.

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In Chindove v William Morrisons Supermarket Plc, the EAT has held that the employee’s absence from the workplace due to illness prior to resignation was relevant to determining whether the delay in resigning in the face of the fundamental breach was fatal to a constructive dismissal claim. The EAT held that the test for constructive dismissal was one of conduct, not of time, and because the individual delayed resigning because he was on sick leave did not mean that it was easy to draw an inference that the delay precluded a constructive dismissal claim.

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Yizen Li v First Marine Solutions and another is a case concerning the employer’s deduction of sums equivalent to the employee’s notice period where she refused to work it on resignation. The employee resigned claiming constructive dismissal. She had a notice period of 1 month. She claimed that she had sufficient holiday remaining to allow her to remain away from work for the period of her notice. The company argued that she had already exhausted her holiday entitlement so she would need to work her notice; but she refused.

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In Hainsworth v Ministry of Defence the Court of Appeal has held that an employer has no duty under the Equality Act to make reasonable adjustments for someone who has a disabled child.  Under the wording of the Equality Act, the reasonable adjustment duty only applies to people who are disabled and not those looking after disabled people. Neither does the Equal Treatment Directive require adjustments to be made for non-disabled people.

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In AB v Chief Constable, the High Court has ruled that an employer who provided a standard reference with a disclaimer cannot provide a further reference when asked to do so by a prospective employer.

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