Contractual claims arising on termination, chiefly wrongful dismissal and unpaid bonuses, and the tribunal's limited jurisdiction over them. Addis v Gramophone Co Ltd; Geys v Societe Generale.
Gross misconduct; conduct must fundamentally undermine the trust and confidence in the relationship. Approved in XX v YY as the simplest formulation, because it absorbs the nature of the contract, the severity of the breach and the reason the employee acted as they did. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Applied by XX v YY [2026] EAT 89 (2026-06-15)
Cited by
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Breach of contract; probationary period; an express contractual right to extend a probationary period must be actively exercised. By allowing the probationary period to pass without dismissing the employee or expressly exercising the right to extend it, the employer lost the right to dismiss on one week's notice and the employee became entitled to three months' notice under her contract. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Contract; repudiatory breach; restates the test as whether, looking at all the circumstances objectively from the perspective of a reasonable person in the position of the innocent party, the contract-breaker has clearly shown an intention to abandon and altogether refuse to perform. All the circumstances count insofar as they bear on that objective assessment: motive is irrelevant if relied on solely to show subjective intention, but relevant where it reflects something the innocent party knew, or a reasonable person would have known, and which throws light on how the act would be viewed. Applied in the employment context in Tullett Prebon and XX v YY.
Cited by
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Termination of contract; elective theory; a wrongful repudiation of a contract of employment does not terminate the contract unless and until the other party elects to accept the repudiation.
Cited by
Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Constructive dismissal; trust and confidence; the EAT rejected the submission that Tullett Prebon had changed the law so as to require a tribunal to make a specific finding on the employer's subjective intention. The Court of Appeal there was emphasising that only objective intention is relevant, ascertained by looking at all the circumstances. Woods and Malik remain intact: breach of the implied term requires no intention to repudiate. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Contractual interpretation; textualism vs contextualism; the Supreme Court clarified that interpretation is a unitary exercise involving both the language of the contract and the factual context.
Cited by
Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Contracts; discretion; implied term that flexibility clauses must be exercised honestly and rationally (Braganza duty).
Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Breach of contract; conditions precedent vs subsequent; implied notice. The EAT held that an offer letter containing all key employment terms (salary, start date, hours, benefits) expressed as 'subject to' references, right-to-work check and probation created a binding contract subject to conditions subsequent, not conditions precedent preventing formation. The probation condition could only logically operate within an existing employment relationship. Reasonable notice is assessed at the date of contract formation, the employer's standard terms, produced only during litigation, could not be incorporated retroactively. Three months' implied notice was reasonable for a senior role involving international relocation.
“Whether the conditions were precedent or subsequent, the correspondence makes it clear that the original document had to be provided for that condition to be fulfilled before the claimant started work.”Judge Susan Walker KC (Hon.), at [28]
Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Wrongful dismissal; gross misconduct; duress. An assistant head teacher sent a sexual message to someone she understood to be a child while under coercive control, and did not report it for 18 months. The tribunal held that because repudiatory breach is assessed objectively, her motive could not affect the answer. HHJ Tayler held this was an error of law: applying Eminence and Neary, the tribunal must consider all the circumstances of the breach insofar as they bear on the objective assessment, including the pressure the employee was under. Duress may weigh heavily on the sending of the message and much less on the failure to report it. Remitted to the same tribunal.
“In conducting that assessment the Employment Tribunal should have considered the duress asserted by the claimant.”His Honour Judge James Tayler, at [34]
Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.