Before accepting an employee’s resignation, it is crucially important to be certain that that is their true intention. In one case, an Employment Tribunal (ET) found that a letter in which a woman asked her manager to ‘please accept one month’s notice’ was ambiguous and did not amount to a resignation. The woman, who was employed by an NHS trust, was not...

Commodity prices go up and down and it sometimes makes financial sense for fully laden vessels to remain at sea for extended periods before discharging their cargos. In considering the financial consequences of one such situation, the High Court emphasised that judges are not in the business of rewriting bargains that have been freely entered into by...

The pressure on vehicle parking spaces in London is extreme and many boroughs have entered into agreements with developers that new residents will not be entitled to apply for parking permits. Doubts in respect of the validity of such arrangements have now been dispelled by an important Court of Appeal ruling. A borough had granted planning consent for the...

If you suffer discrimination in the workplace you can be compensated for injury to your feelings as well as for your financial losses. A £12,000 award was made under that head in one striking case in which a woman was told that she was being made redundant on the same day that she put in a request for maternity leave. The woman, who had a senior managerial role...

Estate planning really is essential, particularly if you own a company, and a failure to take professional advice can store up unforeseen trouble for your loved ones. The point could hardly have been more powerfully made than by one High Court case concerning a company that was plunged into crisis following its founder’s death. The businessman owned all the...