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Northern Ireland
Commercial Motors (Wales) Limited v Howley [2012] UKEAT 0636_11_0608
Decision Number: Legal Body: ukeat
Published on: 10/08/2012
Issues Covered:
Dismissal
Article Authors The main content of this article was provided by the following authors.
Background The Claimant was found to have been unfairly dismissed by the Appellant company. When calculating compensatory damages the Tribunal had included the loss of his use of an executive car, a fuel allowance and the loss of his use of his mobile phone during the contractual notice period. During this period the Claimant had worked for another company from which he was provided with a company car and fuel allowance. The company appealed, arguing that the loss of the car and fuel allowance should not have been included in the damages, the loss of the use of the phone should not have been included as it had offered an alternative phone and that the Claimant‟s subsequent employment broke the chain of causation for loss of earnings. The Claimant cross appealed arguing that he was entitled to losses in respect of a training course and after the end of the notice period.The appeal was allowed in part. The award for losses in respect of the car and fuel allowance was reduced to four-ninths of the original award to reflect the fact that, for more than one month of the notice period the Claimant had invoiced his successor employer for use of a car and a fuel allowance. The Appellant‟s argument in respect of the phone was rejected – the Claimant had a contractual entitlement to the phone. It was implicit in the Tribunal‟s decision that it had rejected the Appellant‟s assertion that it ha offered an alternative phone and its finding was in no way perverse.In regards to the loss of earnings the EAT followed Dench v Flynn & Partners and found that the Claimant‟s subsequent employment did not break the chain of causation, especially since he was employed on a short-term two-month basis and not as a permanent employee. The claimant‟s cross-appeals were dismissed. http://bit.ly/OEMxGd

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Disclaimer The information in this article is provided as part of Legal Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article. This article is correct at 10/08/2012
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