The construction of the employment contract and the terms implied into it. Wood v Capita Insurance Services Ltd; Malik v Bank of Credit and Commerce International SA.
Contract; notice; the court addressed whether a contract was permanent or terminable on notice. Distinguished in Kankanalapalli [2026] EAT 49 on the basis that the case concerned the nature of the contract (permanent vs terminable), not the timing at which reasonable notice should be assessed. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
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.
Contract; conditions precedent; references. The Court of Appeal held that where an offer of employment was conditional upon satisfactory references, the employer was entitled to terminate once references were obtained and found unsatisfactory. Distinguished in Kankanalapalli [2026] EAT 49, inapplicable where references were never sought. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Contract; implied terms; the terms of a non-existent future contract cannot define the legal content of a contract that already exists. Cited in Kankanalapalli [2026] EAT 49 for the principle that an employer's standard employment terms, produced only during litigation, could not be incorporated retroactively into a contract formed earlier. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Contract of employment; the House of Lords confirmed the implied term of mutual trust and confidence: an employer must not, without reasonable and proper cause, conduct itself in a manner calculated or likely to destroy or seriously damage the relationship of confidence and trust. Stigma damages are recoverable where the employer's corrupt conduct damages former employees' employment prospects and causes quantifiable, foreseeable loss. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
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.
Contract; conditions precedent; references. Langstaff J (as he then was) considered that a requirement for satisfactory references meant the formation of the contract depended entirely on the employer being satisfied with the references. Distinguished in Kankanalapalli [2026] EAT 49, inapplicable where references were never sought; neither Wishart nor Mellors addressed the status of a conditional contract before references had been obtained. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Wrongful dismissal; damages; common law damages cannot be recovered for the manner of dismissal (the 'Johnson exclusion zone'). [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
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.
Variation of contract; acceptance by conduct; the source of the 'only referable to' test. Per Elias J: the fundamental question is whether the employee's conduct, by continuing to work, is only referable to their having accepted the new terms imposed by the employer. If the conduct is reasonably capable of a different explanation, it cannot be treated as acceptance. Approved and applied by the Court of Appeal in Abrahall v Nottingham City Council. [Summary not yet checked against the judgment.]
Approved by Abrahall v Nottingham City Council [2018] EWCA Civ 796 (2018-04-19)
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; incorporation of collective agreements; enhanced redundancy pay; custom and practice; compromise agreements. A photographer employed from 1989 and dismissed for redundancy on 4 February 2006 claimed an enhanced redundancy payment of two weeks' basic pay for each completed year of service under a collective agreement of 22 August 2002 between MGN and the British Association of Journalists, incorporated into his 2005 contract.
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.
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.
Supreme Court restated the primacy of clear contractual language. Where the words of a term are unambiguous, the court gives effect to them even if the commercial result is surprising or harsh. Commercial common sense is not a licence to rewrite a contract in defiance of its language.
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.
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.
Variation of contract; acceptance by conduct; pay freeze. Applying Elias J's test in Solectron Scotland v Roper, acceptance of a varied term by continuing to work must be unequivocal: conduct 'only referable to' acceptance, so that conduct reasonably capable of a different explanation is not acceptance [87]. Protest at collective level can negative any inference of individual acceptance [88]. On the facts a freeze on contractual incremental pay progression was not accepted, for three reasons: the variation was wholly disadvantageous, with no compensating benefit from which acceptance of a package could be inferred [102]; it was never put to employees as needing their agreement, the Council maintaining throughout that no contractual right existed [103]; and the unions protested strenuously up to and beyond implementation, while consulting on industrial action [104]. Nearly two years of silence thereafter did not convert refusal into acceptance, though Sir Patrick Elias found the point difficult and would not rule out acceptance where the only way to avoid redundancy is to accept the new terms [109]-[111]. The case concerns variation of a subsisting right, not the original bargain. [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.
Contract; implied terms; Carr LJ set out the modern framework for implying terms into contracts. Applied in Kankanalapalli [2026] EAT 49 in the context of implying a reasonable notice term into a contract of employment silent on the point.
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.