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11 February 2022 / Ian Smith
Issue: 7966 / Categories: Features , Employment
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Employment law brief: 11 February 2022

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Ian Smith draws inner strength from a great statesman &  tackles the impenetrable conundrum that is unjust enrichment & quantum meruit
  • Quantum meruit not enforceable in an employment tribunal.
  • Worker definition—the professional or business undertaking element.
  • Definition of working time—meaning of ‘working time’.

Many years ago, in the early years of our then membership of what became the EU when EU law started to flow up the estuaries and into the rivers (per Lord Denning), your humble author attended a conference to introduce English lawyers into the mysteries of this new legal regime. One of the speakers was the president of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) who was giving a lecture on the novel concept of direct effect of directives and why they bound national governments which could not benefit from their own failure to transpose them. Perhaps due to baffled looks in the audience, this very learned judge tried a domestic analogy. He said: ‘It is like your own concept of estoppel,’ at which a hundred English lawyers’

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

London Solicitors Litigation Association—John McElroy

London Solicitors Litigation Association—John McElroy

Fieldfisher partner appointed president as LSLA marks milestone year

Kingsley Napley—Kirsty Churm & Olivia Stiles

Kingsley Napley—Kirsty Churm & Olivia Stiles

Firm promotes two lawyers to partnership across employment and family

Foot Anstey—five promotions

Foot Anstey—five promotions

Firm promotes five lawyers to partnership across key growth areas

NEWS
Freezing orders in divorce proceedings can unexpectedly ensnare third parties and disrupt businesses. In NLJ this week, Lucy James of Trowers & Hamlins explains how these orders—dubbed a ‘nuclear weapon’—preserve assets but can extend far beyond spouses to companies and business partners 
A Court of Appeal ruling has clarified that ‘rent’ must be monetary—excluding tenants paid in labour from statutory protection. In this week's NLJ, James Naylor explains Garraway v Phillips, where a tenant worked two days a week instead of paying rent
Thousands more magistrates are to be recruited, under a major shake-up to speed up and expand the hiring process
Three men wrongly imprisoned for a combined 77 years have been released—yet received ‘not a penny’ in compensation, exposing deep flaws in the justice system. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Jon Robins reports on Justin Plummer, Oliver Campbell and Peter Sullivan, whose convictions collapsed amid discredited forensics, ‘oppressive’ police interviews and unreliable ‘cell confessions’
A quiet month for employment cases still delivers key legal clarifications. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ, Ian Smith reports that whistleblowing protection remains intact even where disclosures are partly self-serving, provided the worker reasonably believes they serve the ‘public interest’ 
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