Rich pickings

Employment law is all about protecting the helpless and disadvantaged—right? Well, to adapt Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, “Up to a point, Lord Copper”. How about this for a festive pre-Christmas headline: “Banker, offered £7m on leaving employment, awarded £12m instead by our top court plus the right to sue for more, including damages for not being able to avoid as much tax on it as he was hoping to”? A real heart-cockles-warmer guaranteed to leave a nice glow in any reader. In a nutshell, that was the decision in Societe Generale, London Branch v Geys [2012] UKSC 63, [2012] All ER (D) 196 (Dec) handed down on 19 December. However, as is so often the case in employment law, what matters here in the longer term will be not the facts but the serious issues raised by them. Make no mistake, this is a genuinely important case on common law principles, even if there may be doubts (discussed below) as to how widespread its practical effects