The Supreme Court heard the appeal in Various claimants v Wm Morrisons Supermarket in November 2019, as to whether the supermarket is vicariously liable for a data breach by their employee. The judgment will be delivered in 2020
Dec
19
2019
UK: Sexual Harassment – New EHRC guidance
The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) new guidance sets out do’s and don’ts on tackling sexual harassment and discrimination
Dec
19
2019
UK: Legal advice privilege
The Court of Appeal considered whether legal advice privilege applied to a leaked email concerning a redundancy exercise
Dec
19
2019
UK: Indirect discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief
The Court of Appeal dismissed a claim that an employee’s belief in the sanctity of copyright was a protected philosophical belief
Dec
19
2019
UK: Vicarious liability – third party harassment
An employer is only liable for the harassment of an employee by a third party where the employer’s action or inaction is related to the relevant protected characteristic e.g. race or sex
Dec
19
2019
UK: Misconduct dismissals
The EAT has confirmed that changes to an investigator’s report into alleged misconduct made on the advice of an in-house lawyer, did not make the employee’s subsequent dismissal unfair
Dec
19
2019
Sweden: Court rules that copyrighted work vests with the employer
A recent ruling held that the copyrighted work of an illustrator had vested with the employer, regardless of the lack of explicit provisions on the assignment of intellectual property rights, as the illustrator had been contracted and employed specifically to design and illustrate copyrighted work
Dec
19
2019
Spain: Salary complements must be paid even during the holiday period
The Supreme Court determined that salary complements should be included, together with the base salary, as computable concepts in order to calculate the payroll during the holiday period
Dec
19
2019
Norway: Supreme Court rules on the validity of the downsising group used to terminate a senior employee
The Norwegian Supreme Court has ruled that the termination of a senior employee was invalid because the selection group for downsising was too narrowly set. Employers bound by similar seniority clauses/principle of seniority in collective agreements must now be careful not to set aside seniority considerations by limiting selection circles
Dec
19
2019
The Netherlands: Unacceptable behavior (#MeToo) is not a legitimate ground for summary dismissal due to the working atmosphere
The common trend in court rulings is that certain behaviour is not acceptable. This especially applies to certain unwanted touches, such as the ‘hand on the buttock’. An employee must be blamed for such behaviour. In principle, it does not matter if the other employee gave any cause for the approach. This applies all the more so when considering the age difference between the two employees concerned. For certain behavior, the judgment reads, a warning is not necessary because you ‘just do not do that’. However, this behaviour does not directly result in a legitimate summary dismissal. All circumstances of the case need to be taken into account. An employer that accepts certain behaviour from its employees and furthermore promotes a ‘self-styled’ atmosphere designed to be informal, cannot suddenly reverse course and decide to punish morally reprehensible behaviour. Therefore, in creating an atmosphere where the lines of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour are blurred, the employer’s culpability for the misconduct of its employees is shared equally between employer and employee. While there was no doubt as to the employee’s culpability for his actions, the circumstances of the case were nevertheless insufficient to support a legitimate case for a summary dismissal