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FL Memo Ltd © 2007 |
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Employment Memo 2007 Newsletter Issue 2 |
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RECENT CASES |
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Enforcement and remedies Gross negligence manslaughter ¶5072 A company or an employer may be prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter, where there is sufficient evidence to show that there has been gross negligence on its part. Here, the defendant was the managing director of a stone cutting factory and closely supervised activities on the shop floor. A cutting machine was installed in the factory, but its safety features were disabled and an employee was fatally injured. The defendant pleaded guilty at the Crown Court, but was not given a custodial sentence, on the grounds that if he were to be imprisoned the company would fail and its employees would lose their jobs. The Attorney General appealed the sentence, and the Court of Appeal ruled that the question of whether or not the company would have been forced to close without its managing director, was an inappropriate consideration, and was not relevant to sentencing. Were considerations of this sort to be allowed, there would be no incentive for small employers to comply with health and safety legislation. A sentence of 15 months was imposed. Attorney General’s Reference (No 86 of 2006) [2007] ICR 1047, CA
Equality at work Discrimination – Key concepts 1. Territorial scope ¶¶5215, 2280 Generally, workers are excluded from anti-discrimination legislation if they work wholly outside GB. Workers are still covered however even if they work wholly outside GB, where: – the employer has a place of business at an establishment in GB; – the work is for the purposes of business carried on at that establishment; and – the worker is ordinarily resident in GB at the time he applies for, or is offered the employment, or at any time during the course of the employment. In a case concerning a British lecturer who worked for a Malaysian registered company which operated as a franchise of a British university, the EAT held that the above statutory rules on jurisdiction should be interpreted in line with the common law rules which apply when assessing whether work is for the purposes of a business carried on in Great Britain. The same principles apply as are set out in the House of Lords’ decision in Lawson v Serco Ltd (¶2280). Williams v University of Nottingham [2007] EAT case 0124/07 2. Acts of third parties ¶¶5231, 5435 In discrimination and harassment cases, an employer may be liable for the acts of third parties. This principle has previously been limited by the House of Lords (Pearce v The Governing Body of Mayfield School, ¶5231) to situations where the detrimental act was caused or permitted in circumstances in which the employer had sufficient control over whether or not the act would happen and where the employer’s failure to take reasonable steps to protect his employees from the discriminatory act was itself for a reason connected to the worker’s sex race or disability.
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