Case Digests

An employee’s resignation ‘with immediate effect’ meant what it said. Unless there was something to suggest that a ‘cooling off’ period was required and that the employee never actually intended to resign, nothing either party subsequently does can alter what in law was her effective date of termination.

A fairly standard indemnity in a compromise agreement did not oblige an employer to pay an ex-employee’s legal expenses associated with a criminal investigation into action allegedly taken by him when he was an employee.

An employer’s refusal to allow an employee, who would not opt out of a 48-hour week, to work overtime was not unreasonable. Its actions were necessary to comply with its duties under the Working Time Regulations (WTR). The employee had not been penalised nor had he suffered a detriment by refusing to sign the opt out.

When a business is sold, it's not uncommon for the new owners to change the contractors who supply that business. The EAT has held that if the change in contractor occurs at the same time as the sale of the business, the TUPE 'service provision change' rules will not transfer the employees of the old contractor to the new contractor because the client before and after the transfer must be the same for those rules to apply.

While a woman may be placed at a disadvantage because she is a nursing mother on maternity leave in, for example, being called to attend a disciplinary hearing, that does not automatically make her treatment direct sex discrimination. A tribunal must establish what the reason is for the disadvantageous treatment - behaviour may be unreasonable without being discriminatory.

Companies in administration are not exempt from TUPE. This Court of Appeal decision ends two years of legal uncertainty following conflicting EAT decisions. Where the sale of an undertaking by an administrator amounts to a transfer for the purposes of TUPE, the staff will automatically transfer to the buyer and be protected against transfer-related dismissal.