Court of Appeal: when is a controlling shareholder an employee?

The Court of Appeal has handed down its judgment in Berr v Neufeld & Howe, dealing with the question of whether a controlling shareholder can ever be an 'employee' of a company - with the result that the National Insurance fund has to pay redundancy, notice and other payments if the company becomes insolvent.

DBERR were keen for the Court of Appeal to consider this point, given conflicting judgments and some 12,000 such claims on the National Insurance fund last year.

The chaps at http://danielbarnett.c.topica.com/maamYlXabPiKFbLBMZbe/ have produce a first rate summary of this case. Rather than reinvent the wheel, here it is (reproduced with permission).

[Thanks to barrister Clive Jones and solicitor Sue Ball, both of whom acted pro bono for Mr Neufeld, for telling me about this case]