The applicant appealed striking out of her employment claims against the respondent. She had been made bankrupt after lodging her appeal to the EAT, and the EAT had held that she lacked standing to pursue her claim.
Held: Employment claims are in their essential nature personal and not proprietary, and did not vest in the trustee in bankruptcy. A claim for re-instatement or re-engagement and some of the compensation awards were not capable of being things in action, though the eventual fund created in any award might be. There is ‘no bright line’ between personal rights of action and those which form part of a bankrupt’s estate, but that all the reasoning in the authorities ‘tends to place on the non-vesting side of the line a claim which is primarily directed at the restoration of a contractual relationship in which the claimant’s skill and labour are the essential commodity’.
Judges:
Thorpe, Sedley LJJ, Richards J
Citations:
[2003] EWCA Civ 527, Times 18-Apr-2003, [2003] 3 All ER 745
Links:
Statutes:
Employment Rights Act 1996 112 113 114 115 116 117
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Mulkerrins v Pricewaterhouse Coopers HL 31-Jul-2003
The claimant sought damages from her former accountants for failing to protect her from bankruptcy. The receiver had unnecessarily caused great difficulties in making their claim that such an action vested in them. The defendants had subsequently, . .
Cited – Sukui-Lennard v Croydon Primary Healthcare Trust CA 22-Jul-2003
The appellant sought to appeal a striking out of her complaint of race discrimination. She appealed from the Employment Appeal Tribunal which had rejected her appeal in its preliminary hearing procedure.
Held: The Court of Appeal had the power . .
Cited – Lambe v 186K Ltd CA 29-Jul-2004
The claimant had been dismissed for redundancy, but the company had been found not to have consulted him properly, and he had therefore been unfairly dismissed. The tribunal had then found that even if consulted the result would not have been . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment, Insolvency
Updated: 07 June 2022; Ref: scu.180740