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21 May 2015 / Ian Smith
Issue: 7653 / Categories: Features , Employment
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Employment law brief: 21 May 2015

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Ian Smith considers the common law on undiscovered misconduct & follows the developing law on early conciliation

As I recovered from the shock of the general election, with my own private (and highly reliable) poll having shown a clear win for the Monster Raving Loony Party (whose employment law policies seemed much more sensible than anything coming out of Westminster or Brussels), I was then faced with an offer I could not refuse from my old mucker Dr John McMullen (the Don Corleone of Newcastle) that if I dared to nick the Woolworths case on redundancy consultation for this column I would wake up with a severed horse’s head in my bed. Being of a religion that abhors violence (I am a born again coward) I of course caved in to this delicate request. The cases selected this month therefore are rather different. The first concerns the exhumation of a very old common law rule that is capable of strengthening the employer’s hand considerably on termination. The rest of this column

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NEWS
The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 transformed criminal justice. Writing in NLJ this week, Ed Cape of UWE and Matthew Hardcastle and Sandra Paul of Kingsley Napley trace its ‘seismic impact’
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Criminal juries may be convicting—or acquitting—on a misunderstanding. Writing in NLJ this week Paul McKeown, Adrian Keane and Sally Stares of The City Law School and LSE report troubling survey findings on the meaning of ‘sure’
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has narrowly preserved a key weapon in its anti-corruption arsenal. In this week's NLJ, Jonathan Fisher KC of Red Lion Chambers examines Guralp Systems Ltd v SFO, in which the High Court ruled that a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) remained in force despite the company’s failure to disgorge £2m by the stated deadline
As the drip-feed of Epstein disclosures fuels ‘collateral damage’, the rush to cry misconduct in public office may be premature. Writing in NLJ this week, David Locke of Hill Dickinson warns that the offence is no catch-all for political embarrassment. It demands a ‘grave departure’ from proper standards, an ‘abuse of the public’s trust’ and conduct ‘sufficiently serious to warrant criminal punishment’
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