EAT Jurisdictional Points: Claim in time and effective date of termination
Claimant was suspended from duty as a teacher and entered into negotiations with Respondent for a compromise agreement whereby he would be compensated for termination of his employment. It was envisaged that under the agreement the parties would agree that his employment terminated on 31 October 2006. This was included in a preamble to a draft agreement that was never in fact agreed and was marked ‘without prejudice’ and ‘subject to contract’. In the expectation that the agreement would be executed, the Respondent removed the Claimant, to his knowledge, from the payroll effective 31 October 2006. The Employment Judge held that there was a freestanding agreement that the Claimant’s employment should be terminated as at 31 October 2006 and the three-month time limit began to run for the purpose of section 11 of the Employment Rights Act from that date; the Claimant, asserted the EDT was later and that if his EDT was correct his application was in time. Appeal allowed on the basis that it was impossible to construct a freestanding agreement and the Claimant’s EDT accepted. The Respondent sought to argue that the case was on all fours with Robert Cort and Son Ltd v Chapman [1981] IRLR 437 and that the decision to take the Claimant off the payroll amounted to a termination of his employment with immediate effect. Held that Cort v Chapman required there to be something equivalent to an unequivocal dismissal. On the facts of the instant case the decision to remove from the payroll appeared to be made in the expectation that the draft agreement would be executed and to give effect to it rather than with a view to termination of the employment in any event.
Citations:
[2008] UKEAT 0114 – 08 – 0905
Links:
Cited by:
Appeal from – Kirklees Metropolitan Council v Radecki CA 8-Apr-2009
The council appealed against a finding that the claimant’s case had been brought in time. There had been negotiations for a compromise agreement which had failed. The EAT had found it unclear that the employment had ended at the point asserted by . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment
Updated: 19 July 2022; Ref: scu.272548