Implied Terms

[Thanks to James Medhurst of Employment Law Advocates for preparing this case summary]

The Court of Appeal has handed down its decision in Garratt v Mirror Group Newspapers, which is an interesting case about the implication of terms into an employment contract. It was held that a term requiring Mr Garratt to sign a compromise agreement before receiving an enhanced redundancy payment could be implied because:

• no employee had been paid an enhanced redundancy payment without signing a compromise agreement since 1993.
  
  
• the requirement to sign a compromise agreement was expressly notified to all employees identified as redundant and the signing of such an agreement was an automatic consequence of being dismissed as redundant.
  
  
• no employee, other than Mr Garratt, has sought to insist on a contractual right to an enhanced redundancy payment in the absence of a signed compromise agreement.
  
  
• before the redundancy process started, Mr Garratt knew that he would have to sign a compromise agreement in order to get the enhanced redundancy payment provided by his contract.