New EAT Decisions

These decisions have just been placed on the EAT website. They are currently unreported, but may be reported in due course.

Paggetti v Cobb (HHJ Peter Clark, 22/3/02)
An employee's compensatory award was calculated on the basis of his actual wage, which was £1.88 per hour. The EAT overturned this, holding that when calculating a compensatory award, a tribunal should never base it on less than the minimum wage (then £3.60ph) because, to do so, would be to disregard the National Minimum Wage Act 1988 and allow the employer to benefit from his breach of that Act. Accordingly, the compensatory award should be calculated based on an hourly rate of £3.60, not £1.80.
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Brown v Tomlinsons Dairies (Mr Commissioner Howell QC, 10/4/02)
The employee was at risk of redundancy, but had not been dismissed. He wrote to the employer, asserting he had been dismissed, and refused to attend work. After several attempts to persuade him he had not been dismissed, the employer eventually treated the employee as having resigned. The EAT confirmed this was a dismissal within section 95 of the ERA 1996, by way of the employer accepting the employee's repudiatory breach (refusing to work) and thereby bringing the contract to an end. However, the dismissal was fair, primarily because there was little else the employer could do.
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