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15 February 2013 / Ian Smith
Issue: 7548 / Categories: Features , Employment
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The blame game

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Ian Smith considers apportioning liability between respondents & the correct approach to Polkey

Highest on the recent newsworthiness index must be the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the Ladele et al litigation (Eweida and Chaplin v United Kingdom [2011] ECHR 738; Ladele and McFarlane v United Kingdom [2011] ECHR 737) on religious symbolry and objections to certain aspects of a job function. However, this column picks out two other, very different cases which raised difficult points of more prosaic employment law but with both appearing in the national press because of their facts. That factor gives them a unifying element but what most starkly divides them is their final outcomes—in one a lawyer who was unlawfully refused two posts she applied for on racial grounds received in excess of £420,000, whereas in the other a school playtime supervisor who lost her job due to a falling out with the school over a playground incident was eventually awarded £49.99. That is not to say that this is in

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