Employment law brief: 8 February 2018

• Pension equality: macro issues at a micro level?
• Unfair dismissal of a fixed-term employee.
• Tribunal jurisdiction to construe a contract.
• Injury to feelings damages available in all detriment cases.

What a way to treat a distinguished High Court judge in his retirement. There was Sir Alan Wilkie sitting harmlessly at home watching Escape to the Country when agents of the state broke in and put a chloroform mask over him, so strong that he only woke up a day later shackled to the judge’s chair in the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) and made to hear the joined appeals in two cases of such complexity that they evoke in any readers the prescient statement of Monty Python’s Professor Gumby —‘My brain hurts’. The cases are Lord Chancellor v McCloud UKEAT/0071/17 and Sargeant v London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority UKEAT/0116/17, both of which constituted major test cases