Whether an employee who delays resigning has affirmed the contract and lost the right to treat it as at an end. Kaur v Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust; Leaney v Loughborough University.
Constructive dismissal; affirmation; working out extended notice. An employee who resigned in response to an alleged repudiatory breach but gave seven months' notice when his contract required only three, solely for his own financial reasons, affirmed the contract; strike-out of his constructive unfair dismissal claim was upheld. Affirmation is fact-sensitive: the length of notice given beyond the contractual minimum and the reasons for giving it are relevant circumstances under s.95(1)(c) ERA 1996 — resigning on notice does not immunise the employee from affirming by the manner of doing so. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Not followed by Quilter Private Client Advisers Ltd v Falconer [2020] EWHC 3294 (QB) (2020-12-04)
Constructive dismissal; affirmation; cumulative breach. The EAT held that an employee who had affirmed the contract in response to earlier breaches could not revive those breaches by reference to a later 'last straw' act. This approach was disapproved by the Court of Appeal in Kaur v Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust [2019] ICR 1, which confirmed that an employee victim of a continuing cumulative breach may rely on the totality of acts provided the later act forms part of the same series. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Disapproved by Kaur v Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust [2018] EWCA Civ 978 (2018-05-01)
Constructive dismissal; 'last straw'; a last straw act revives all previous breaches of contract. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
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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; resignation on notice does not necessarily affirm. Provided the employee makes her objection unambiguously clear, giving a short period of notice and continuing to work and draw pay for a limited period is not fatal. Calver J expressly disagreed with Simler J's dictum in Cockram v Air Products that at common law the employee must resign without notice, and held that affirmation also requires knowledge of the right to elect. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
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; affirmation; delay. Mere passage of time is not, of itself, affirmation: the question is whether the employee's conduct during the period conveyed an intention to keep the contract alive, and where little or nothing is required of the employee under the contract during the period (here a university vacation, with settlement communications ongoing) delay carries less weight. The tribunal's finding that a three-month gap before resignation amounted to affirmation was set aside and the issue remitted.
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.