A Catholic journalist who was upset and offended by a senior colleague’s foul-mouthed reference to the Pope has failed to convince the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) that he was a victim of religious harassment. The words used by the editor…
If a member of staff uses your computer system to exchange emails, does the content of the email become the property of your business? This question was addressed recently in a court case concerning a dispute that arose between a…
Employee theft is often an exclusion in commercial insurance policies. When fashion retailer Ted Baker found that it had suffered a major loss due to employee theft of stock, AXA, the company’s insurer, declined to meet the claim on the…
A High Court case underlines the importance of careful wording when drafting restrictive covenants, as well as the need for regular review of contractual restrictions to ensure they reflect the current position. The court held that an employee was entitled…
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that United Kingdom legislation is deficient as it does not protect employees, including those with less than one year’s service, from dismissal on grounds of political opinion or affiliation (Redfearn v…
In the light of a recent Court of Appeal decision, businesses should ensure their employees are fully aware of the potentially serious consequences connected with discrimination and harassment in the workplace. The decision confirmed that joint and several liability is…
A company director who lured customers away from his former employer after he had resigned from his post has been ordered to pay £50,000 in damages for breach of a non-solicitation clause in his employment contract. The defendant was employed…
An Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decision confirms that a business must conduct a thorough investigation before dismissing an employee, especially where the employee's integrity is in question, as a higher level of investigation may be required to establish their guilt…
Franchisors will welcome a High Court decision that applied established employment law principles on restrictive covenants to a business to business relationship. The court enforced an ambiguously drafted restrictive covenant against an ex-franchisee and also dismissed an argument that a…
A ‘worker’ who acts as a ‘whistleblower’ – disclosing breaches of the law – receives statutory protection under the law if he or she suffers detrimental treatment as a result of having made the disclosure to the appropriate authorities. Recently,…
