
Ian Smith serves up a turbo-charged, non-biased update on recent case law & substantive procedural matters
Much of the case development in recent employment law has concerned mainstream substantive matters such as employment/worker status and contractual and statutory rights on dismissal. However, for a change the four cases (three Court of Appeal and one Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT)) considered this month show that other substantive areas and procedural matters must not be overlooked, even if they may seem at times to have gone to sleep. The first two concern the same litigation—namely the ‘ASDA cases’ on equal pay—the third is a Court of Appeal case on extension of time for appealing to the EAT, and the fourth is an EAT case on when robust exchanges between Bench and Bar do and (more importantly) do not constitute apparent bias.
Comparison matters
In the group action in ASDA Stores Ltd v Brierley