Employment (Case Study)

It is perhaps surprising to remember that it was only about 30 years ago that the first major statute concerning employment matters was passed by Parliament. Before then the common law set the boundaries of the relationship between “master” and “servant”. Some of these are still relevant including the famous case when Bette Davis refused to perform in a West End play after contracting to do so and the Court decided that an employee could not be forced to work although they may have to pay damages for breach of contract which resulted from that refusal.

Tribunals

Since their first appearance, employment statutes have been passed with ever increasing frequency making employment law one of the fastest growing areas of law. Despite the initial wish to make employment tribunals an informal and easy environment in which people could represent themselves, this has not happened in practice. Progressively, the intricacies of the legal framework have required professional advice and Max Engel regularly represent clients (both employers and employees) before the Employment Tribunals.

Each case will turn on its own facts and how the law can be applied to those facts. The mood in the Tribunal is often sombre interspersed with moments of anger. There can however be occasional moments of humour; such as the time an employer (red in the face and sweating) shouted at the top of his voice at the Chairman of the Tribunal that he was not a man to lose his temper with an employee.

An interesting incident occurred when a computer programmer agreed under cross examination that a particular course of action could lead to a computer being tampered with in a particular way. This pleased the solicitor on the other side who thought he had made out his case until under re-examination, the witness said that the chances of such a thing happening were 67 million to 1. The Tribunal decided that the odds were too great and found for our client.