Employment law cases in the news – 23.01.2017 to 29.01.2017

In the latest of our series of posts on employment law cases in the news we look at nine employment law-related cases that have made headlines between 23 January and 29 January 2017

  1. A group of 111 former BHS staff are suing administrators over redundancy procedures – Over 100 former BHS employees have launched a claim against the retailer’s administrators over their alleged failure to consult staff before they were made redundant (City AM)
  2. Axed McKie fingerprints expert to get her hands on £300,000 after 10-year court battle – The fingerprint expert at the centre of the notorious Shirley McKie case is set for a £300,000 payout. Fiona McBride was told last week by an employment tribunal that her former police employers must pay her 10 years of back pay and let her return to her old job next month (Daily Record)
  3. Teacher awarded £347,000 after she was forced to quit and live on benefits in a caravan – A teacher was unfairly dismissed by the school she had worked in for 23 years after she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Nicola Sinclair, 50, has told how the loss of her job led to her losing her home, her marriage, and her health (The Mirror)
  4. Union takes legal action against delivery courier Hermes – TV News has learned that the GMB Union is set to launch legal proceedings against the delivery company Hermes. Hermes has 14,500 couriers in Britain which it says are self employed (ITV)
  5. South Yorkshire firm faces compensation payouts of £425, 000 to employees – A South Yorkshire manufacturing firm faces paying compensation totalling £425, 000 to dozens of staff for alleged breaches of employment laws (The Star)
  6. Clerk off sick for 7 years was ‘ordered back to work’ – A clerk for Estée Lauder felt “intimidated” by a letter from the company saying she was fit to return to work after seven years off sick, she told an employment tribunal (The Times)
  7. Ministry of Defence ‘destroyed the career of respected doctor because he was a whistleblower who opposed the Iraq War’ – The Ministry of Defence ‘destroyed the career’ of a well respected doctor because he was a whistle blower, an employment tribunal was told yesterday. Dr Stephen Frost, 69, was dismissed from his job as a locum at Weeton Barracks in Lancashire after an Afghan war veteran was prescribed with six times the normal dose of morphine tablets (The Daily Mail)
  8. Three construction companies fined after worker fall – Three companies from Essex have been fined after a worker fell over seven meters through a fragile roof he was replacing. Chelmsford Crown Court heard how Rafal Myslim was standing on the fragile roof at Dengie Crops Ltd in Asheldem, when the asbestos sheeting gave way and he fell 7.5m onto a concrete floor, hitting a number of pipes within the building on the way down (HSE)
  9. Sports Direct modern slavery brothers jailed – Two brothers who trafficked 18 people from Poland to the UK and conned and threatened them have been jailed. Erwin and Krystian Markowski, both from Nottingham, recruited the vulnerable men to work at the Sports Direct warehouse in Shirebrook, Derbyshire (BBC)