Employment law brief: 8 August 2019

• The Supreme Court in Tillman v Egon Zehnder Ltd [2019] UKSC 32 has reformulated the law on severance of unreasonable elements in clauses.

Unusually for this column (or, as a Dean of my old Law School used to refer to it, ‘Smith’s monthly rant’) this month it concentrates on just one case because it is of such importance and interest in revisiting an area (whether an invalid element in a restraint of trade clause in a contract of employment can be severed and the rest enforced) which has been untouched by the highest courts for decades. In doing so, the judgment overturns a 99-year-old leading authority with which we were all brought up. The case seems to be pro-employer in its result (relaxed rules on severance) but arguably the position is more nuanced than that. Moreover, not surprisingly given the fundamental nature of the rethink of the law here, there are aspects which will no