Menzies Law Newsletter 2022 Issue 1

In our case updates we look at a variety of cases and their implications:

Two Court of Appeal’s decisions conclude that:

• workers are entitled to carry over taken unpaid leave and be paid for it at the end of their employment (making misclassification of workers as self-employed an expensive mistake!); and
• an employee’s (dangerous) practical joke was not sufficiently connected to his employment for the employer to be held vicariously liable for the personal injury that it caused.

And two Employment Appeal Tribunal decisions;

• bringing vexatious grievances can amount to gross misconduct,
• a tribunal can extend time in a discrimination claim where the employees have waited to issue proceedings while pursuing grievances.

What we’ve been doing recently…

Apart from battling more Covid (two of the team are recovering from recent bouts), we’ve been busy delivering lots of legal training to our clients; employment law skills for managers, performance management and TUPE workshops.   We’d be happy to help on any legal training requirements you may have. Please get in touch with Lindsey (lindsey@menzieslaw.co.uk).

Also keeping us out of trouble has been a rather high volume of tribunal work.  Cases seem to be complex and often involve multiple claims and with themes including hidden disabilities and ‘constructive knowledge’, sex and race discrimination claims.  On the non-litigious side of things, Business Immigration advice has been significant in recent months with several employers needing to sponsor new employees from overseas.  There has also been a volume of Reward activity with businesses looking at everything from Equal Pay Audits to new pay structures.

Here are all of the Government reforms and case updates we cover this month:

• Government reforms (1): April Changes – Are you ready?
• Government reforms (2): Compulsory vaccines – to be cancelled
• Case update (1): Holiday pay
• Case update (2): Vexatious grievances and unfair dismissal
• Case update (3): Vicarious liability
• Case update (4): Discrimination and time limits