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
