HR Articles

A settlement agreement (or compromise agreement as it used to be known) is a contract between an employee and employer.

The very public resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam has clearly generated the media coverage he anticipated.

His Honour Judge Auerbach has reiterated the importance of properly pleading the case in his decision in Upton-Hansen Architects (“UHA”) v Gyftaki.

The claimant was a financial accountant for a charity called Phoenix House. She claimed that she was being improperly treated by her company during a large restructuring.

In Awan v ICTS Ltd the EAT found an implied term that where an employee is contractually entitled to long-term disability benefits, they will not be dismissed for continuing incapacity. The Claimant had a contractual entitlement to a long-term disability benefit plan for the duration of his employment.

The Court of Appeal recently confirmed that an ambiguous letter of acceptance of resignation from an employer did not vary the original termination date by agreement. JLT Speciality v Craven concerned a bonus advance of £500,000 which was agreed to be repayable if the Claimant resigned “on or before 31 December 2016”.

In the recent case of Patel v Folkstone Nursing Home Ltd, the Court of Appeal held that an employee had not been dismissed by his employer as his internal appeal against dismissal had been successful; thereby effectively erasing the earlier dismissal. The claimant had been dismissed for gross misconduct for falsifying records and sleeping whilst on duty.

As we have previously blogged, if an employee fails to produce evidence of his right to work in the UK, it will not necessarily be fair for an employer to dismiss on the basis that it would be illegal to continue to employ the employee. However, dismissal in these circumstances can still be fair if the employer has a reasonable and genuinely held belief that it would be illegal to continue to employ them and has followed a fair process.

If an employee is dismissed for gross misconduct just short of 2 years service, s/he cannot add on statutory minimum notice so as to qualify to bring an unfair dismissal claim, found the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in Lancaster & Duke Limited v Wileman.

The recent EAT decision of Quintiles Commercial v Barongo held that even in the absence of any prior warnings, a dismissal for misconduct is not necessarily unfair where the conduct is labelled ‘serious misconduct’ rather than ‘gross misconduct’. The Tribunals need to consider the circumstances as a whole when assessing the decision to dismiss.