A sting in the tail

Three cases this month concern important issues on dismissal law. The first and third are on old law, one concerning common law contractual liability (with a nasty sting in the tail) and the other concerning disciplinary warnings which contains a very useful resume by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) president. The second case concerns another employment law immutable, the range of reasonable responses test for unfair dismissal, but with a modern twist to the arguments.

A cautionary tale

The decision of Briggs J in Smith v Trafford Housing Trust [2012] EWHC 3221 (Ch), [2012] All ER (D) 201 (Nov) concerning the unlawful disciplining and demotion of a housing manager because of an outside-work Facebook posting criticising proposals for same-sex marriage as “an equality too far” was widely reported in the press and, moreover, it contains a very interesting application (to the claimant’s great disadvantage on damages) of one of the more esoteric elements of employment law, the rule in Hogg v Dover College