“A businesswoman sacked after a night entertaining clients ended in spectacular embarrassment has had her hopes of a compensation payout boosted by a tribunal ruling.”
Daily Telegraph, 22nd March 2012
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
BESTrustees plc v Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander Ltd [2012] EWHC 629 (Ch); [2012] WLR (D) 84
“Where an insolvency event had occurred in relation to an employer, thereby triggering a calculation of the deficiencies in the assets of a pension fund under section 75 of the Pensions Act 1995, the time at which both the value of the pension scheme assets and the cost of the notional acquisition of annuities in the market to match its liabilities should be assessed was the ‘applicable time’ within the meaning of regulation 5 of the Occupational Pension Schemes (Employer Debt) Regulations 2005, which, in the form which the regulation 5 had taken as at 8 October 2008, was the date of the insolvency event.”
WLR Daily, 16th March 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“Morayo Fagborun Bennett says the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) decision in O’Brien v Ministry of Justice ‘sweeps away’ many of the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) justifications for distinguishing between part-time and full-time judges. ‘The MoJ is going to have to think hard how it handles the case when it comes back to the Supreme Court,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t lend itself to any easy settlement and there are thousands eagerly awaiting the outcome.'”
Hardwick Chambers, 14th March 2012
Source: www.hardwicke.co.uk
“Employers with occupational pension schemes will have to consult with affected employees in advance if they want to change the measure of inflation used to calculate the value of benefits.”
OUT-LAW.com, 14th March 2012
Source: www.out-law.com
O’Brien v Ministry of Justice (Case C-393/10); [2012] WLR (D) 58
“It was for the member states to define the concept of ‘workers who have an employment contract or an employment relationship’ within the meaning of clause 2.1 of the Framework Agreement on part-time work, provided that this did not lead to arbitrary exclusion from protection offered by Directive 97/81/EC.”
WLR Daily, 1st March 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
Department for Education v Molyneux: [2012] EWCA Civ 193; [2012] WLR (D) 50
“Regulations E33(2A) and E33(3) of the Teachers’ Pensions Regulations 1997, as amended, did not impose an obligation on the Secretary of State, when considering an application by a teacher for an early pension due to ill-health, made pursuant to regulation E4(4), to request further information from the teacher where the submitted medical evidence did not disclose the incapacity to the degree required but, rather, imposed an obligation on the teacher to produce all necessary medical evidence, with the Secretary of State holding a supplementary power to exercise as he thought fit.”
WLR Daily, 28th February 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
Blight and others v Brewster: [2012] EWHC 165 (Ch); [2012] WLR (D) 26
“Bankrupts who were subject to an order for enforcement of a judgment had to take both the benefits and burdens of their bankruptcy and should not be allowed to hide their assets in pension funds when they had a right to withdraw monies needed to pay their creditors.”
WLR Daily, 9th February 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“Police authorities may have to find tens of millions of pounds extra to fund their pension liabilities after a retired inspector won a landmark legal challenge preserving his income.”
The Guardian, 6th February 2012
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“Judges are considering legal action to block an increase in their pension contributions.”
Law Society’s Gazette, 1st February 2012
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
“Companies with more than 250 employees will have to automatically enrol their staff into a workplace pension scheme from October as originally planned, the Government has said.”
OUT-LAW.com, 26th January 2012
Source: www.out-law.com
“Descendants of Josiah Wedgwood, the 18th-century pottery manufacturer, have called on the Government to intervene to prevent the selling off of the Wedgwood Museum.”
Daily Telegraph, 9th January 2012
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“Public sector union Unison is being investigated by the ASA after three advertisements it placed in the national press were described as ‘misleading’ and ‘inaccurate.’ ”
Daily Telegraph, 5th January 2012
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“The Government is pressing ahead with legislation to enact its controversial public sector pension reform in the new year, even though an agreement has not been reached with unions to end the bitter dispute.”
The Independent, 20th December 2011
Source: www.indpendent.co.uk
“Loans between pension schemes are ‘unauthorised payments’ which cannot be used as a way of unlocking pension capital before a scheme member retires, the High Court has ruled.”
OUT-LAW.com, 21st December 2011
Source: www.out-law.com
“Britain is set to lose a world-renowned museum following a high court ruling which could force it to sell its collection to pay off a £134m pension deficit. The Wedgwood Museum in Stoke-on-Trent faces being forced to sell its historic collection of china, masterpieces by Stubbs, Romney and Reynolds, and an archive linked to the nation’s social and industrial history. Judges in Birmingham ruled that the pottery collection owned by the museum was an asset of Waterford Wedgwood Potteries, which went bust in 2009. The collection can now be sold to pay off creditors, the largest of which is the Pension Protection Fund.”
The Guardian, 19th December 2011
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“New rules cracking down on companies who ‘bribe’ staff approaching retirement age into taking cash payments in exchange for lower pension payouts will be in place by next summer, the Pensions Minister will say today.”
Daily Telegraph, 6th December 2011
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
A recession tends to lead to more claims but fewer trials. Employees naturally look for ways to maximise the value of their claims – particularly by reference to causes of action that bust the cap for a ‘vanilla’ unfair dismissal – often (in the case of high value employees) by reference to the whistleblowing legislation. The ‘bar’ for what qualifies for protection as a whistleblowing disclosure is set relatively low, and an employee dismissed from (say) employment in the financial services sector can usually identify something he or she has said in the recent past that can be held out as ‘revealing’ the employer’s true motivation for dismissing and/or as supporting a section 103A claim. On the flip side, recessions may give employers greater scope for ‘Polkey Chance’ arguments – market uncertainty undermines security of employment, and even if the employee has been unfairly dismissed now, who is to say that he or she would still have been in post in a year’s time?
Full story (PDF)
11 KBW, 10th November 2011
Source: www.11kbw.com
Copple and others v Littlewoods plc and others [2011] EWCA Civ 1281; [2011] WLR (D) 319
“Where an employer’s pension scheme indirectly discriminated against part-timers on the ground of sex by denying them access to the scheme, a female part-time worker was not entitled to any remedy arising from her exclusion from the scheme if she would not in fact have chosen to join the scheme even if she had been eligible to do so.”
WLR Daily, 8th November 2011
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“A High Court test case has been launched to tackle the ‘biggest robbery’ from the pension payouts to British pensioners, unions have claimed. The head of Britain’s largest civil service union sets out the case against the change in pension indexation from the retail price index to the consumer price index.”
Daily Telegraph, 25th October 2011
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
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