A software designer has lost his appeal against a court ruling that his employer owned the copyright on his work. The case involved Penhallurick and MD5 Ltd. Penhallurick had been employed by MD5 in 2006 to develop virtual forensic computing (VFC) software, after developing a manual VFC method as part of his MSc degree. VFC
A university lecturer was unfairly dismissed after she was accused of being ‘unnaturally loud’. The case involved Dr Annette Plaut, who was an experimental physics lecturer at the university of Exeter until she was fired in 2019. She had been at the university since 1990. Her style involved leading many heated discussions which included expressive
A 14-year-old who was dismissed for being too young to cope with the ‘severity’ of her job has won her claim of age discrimination. The case involved Miss H Cassidy, who had a Saturday job at Daimler Foundation’s café. Her duties included serving customers, working the till and cleaning. After her first shift, which was
A veterinary assistant was unfairly dismissed after she challenged her employer’s view that the coronavirus pandemic had been ‘hyped up’. The case involved Charlotte Rendina who worked at Royston Veterinary Centre from January to March 2020. She was dismissed by her employer, Dr White, due to her ‘poor performance’. However, the Employment Tribunal heard that
An employment tribunal had been wrong to hold that an employee’s alleged menopausal symptoms did not amount to a disability for the purposes of a discrimination claim. That was the ruling of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in a case involving Leicester City Council and one of its childcare social workers, Ms Rooney. Rooney had
A teacher who locked a misbehaving pupil in a store cupboard, that was rumoured to be haunted, has won his claim of unfair dismissal. Mr Mohammad Basit taught maths at Pleckgate High School in Blackburn from 2012. He had an unblemished record and was known for his self-professed ‘love of his job’. However, an incident
The coverage in the press in relation to Alice Thompson’s case against her employer Manors Estate Agents is understandable: any case with a large settlement figure and an easy headline is going to attract attention. However, while it is being portrayed as a huge pay out for simply not allowing an employee to leave work
A supermarket assistant was discriminated against when managers didn’t believe he could be intimidated by a 5ft 4in woman. The case involved Mr T King, who is 6ft tall, and his Tesco line manager, known as JF, who was five months pregnant at the time. King also worked for the Aylesbury Fire Service and was
The Employment Tribunal has ruled that a former employee was subjected to harassment related to his sex and discriminated against on the grounds of sex by his Employer. The case involved Mr Toby King, who worked for Tesco Stores Limited as a Customer Assistant from 18 November 2017 until he was dismissed with effect on
A woman who stumbled across a workplace WhatsApp group featuring racially abusive remarks about her has been awarded nearly £25,000 for unlawful harassment on the grounds of sex, race and religious belief. The case involved Mrs Muna Abdi who worked as an operations clerk for Deltec in Hounslow. She was originally from Somalia and moved