Increasing mobility of employees is leading to more jurisdictional disputes, says Juliet Carp
Over the last few months English courts have been busy looking at when our laws apply to employees working abroad. In 2006 the House of Lords decided, in the joined cases of Lawson v Serco Ltd; Botham v Ministry of Defence; Crofts and others v Veta Ltd and others [2006] UKHL 3, [2006] All ER 823 that employees can only claim unfair dismissal in Britain if they are “employed in Great Britain”. Three exceptional situations were described where employees working overseas can make claims here. These are: peripatetic employees based in ; employees working in a British enclave abroad; and employees posted abroad for the purposes of a British business (the latter exception did not actually apply to any of the employees considered in Serco).
Serco was followed by Williams v University of Nottingham UKEAT/0124/07/RN, [2007] All ER (D) 304 (Jan) in which the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) applied the third exception to a lecturer working in . Williams
