Kefil v JJ Food Service Ltd

Employment Unfair dismissal. The Employment Appeal Tribunal found that the employment tribunal, in upholding the employee's claim for unfair dismissal, had neither fallen into the error of substituting its own decision for that of the employer, nor had its judgment been perverse.

Turner v South Central Ambulance Service NHS Trust

Employment Disability. The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the employment tribunal had not erred, though in its reasoning it could have been more precise, in finding that the employee had failed to show to the requisite standard that she had been disabled during her period of employment with the employer.

O'Brien v Haringey London Borough Council

Employment Sick leave. The Employment Appeal Tribunal found that the employment tribunal had erred in rejecting the employee's sick pay claim after she had contracted an illness whilst visiting, during her holiday, a school in the Gambia with which her own school had wanted to foster links, on the basis that the employee's activities in the Gambian school had been undertaken in the course of her employment.

*International Energy Group Ltd v Zurich Insurance Plc UK

Insurance Indemnity insurance. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, held that a judge had been wrong to find that the defendant insurer's liability to the claimant insured under an employer's liability policy had restricted the indemnity that the claimant could claim under the policy for damages paid to an employee who had contracted mesothelioma by proportioning the period of the employee's period of work with the claimant to the period under which the claimant had been insured with the defendant. If an employer was liable to his employee for his employee's mesothelioma following a tortious exposure to asbestos created during an insurance period, then, for the purposes of the insuring clause in the employer's liability policy, the disease was 'caused' within the insurance period.

*O'Brien v Ministry of Justice (Council of Immigration Judges intervening)

Employment 'Worker'. The Supreme Court held that the claimant, a retired part-time recorder, had been a 'worker' for the purposes of the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000, , that a difference in treatment between part-time and full-time judges could not be objectively justified and that, accordingly, he was entitled to a pension on terms equivalent to those applicable to a circuit judge.

Tayeh v Barchester Healthcare Ltd

Employment Wrongful dismissal. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, held that the Employment Appeal Tribunal had been entitled to find that the employment tribunal had erred in finding that the dismissal of the claimant employee had fallen outside the band of reasonable responses that might be adopted by a reasonable employer.

Readman v Devon Primary Care Trust

Redundancy Dismissal by reason of redundancy. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, allowed an appeal by an employer against a decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found that the employee had not unreasonably refused an offer of suitable alternative employment and was entitled to a statutory redundancy payment. The court agreed with the EAT that the employment tribunal had erred in failing to address the employee's core reasons for refusing the job offer. However, the EAT had not been entitled to substitute its own view and the matter would be remitted to the tribunal.

Jennings v Barts and the London NHS Trust

Employment Disability. The Employment Appeal Tribunal, in dismissing both the employee's appeal against the employment tribunal's decision to dismiss his claims for disability discrimination and unfair dismissal as well as the employer's cross-appeal that it had constructive knowledge of his disability, held that there had been no error of fact or law in the tribunal's decision to warrant interference.

Vaughan v Lewisham Borough Council

Employment Discrimination. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (the EAT) dismissed the appeal of an employee who had sought to use covertly made recordings of interactions between herself and colleagues and managers, in support of her claims.

Jakpa v London Underground Ltd and others

Employment tribunal Procedure. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) dismissed the appeal by the employee against the striking out of his claims for unfair dismissal and race discrimination by the employment tribunal. The EAT decided that in view of the employee's unreasonable conduct of the proceedings, there had been no error of approach by the tribunal.