Ian Smith considers the common law on undiscovered misconduct & follows the developing law on early conciliation
As I recovered from the shock of the general election, with my own private (and highly reliable) poll having shown a clear win for the Monster Raving Loony Party (whose employment law policies seemed much more sensible than anything coming out of Westminster or Brussels), I was then faced with an offer I could not refuse from my old mucker Dr John McMullen (the Don Corleone of Newcastle) that if I dared to nick the Woolworths case on redundancy consultation for this column I would wake up with a severed horse’s head in my bed. Being of a religion that abhors violence (I am a born again coward) I of course caved in to this delicate request. The cases selected this month therefore are rather different. The first concerns the exhumation of a very old common law rule that is capable of strengthening the employer’s hand considerably on termination. The rest of this column is concerned with the first cases on the new system
