Ian Smith celebrates the highs & lows of recent tribunal decisions
In a month notable for the high-profile rejection of the “Heyday” challenge to the default retirement age of 65, but in a way that strongly suggested that it will need to be removed when the government carries out its promised review of it (now to be in 2010 rather than 2011 as originally indicated) and for the equally newsworthy decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that an employee who is sick while taking holiday can ask for the holiday to be rescheduled, the cases considered here are at the opposite end of the employment law spectrum where there is no obvious news and/or political interest, but where pronouncements on points of common law or statutory interpretation can have just as great an effect on the longer-term development of the law.
Ultra vires contracts
While it has always been clear that employment under an illegal contract is potentially void, destroying any rights, what is the position where the contract is ultra vires the putative employer? As Slade J said in the
