COMPROMISE AGREEMENT

University of East London v Hinton: [2005] EWCA Civ 532

CA: Mummery, Smith LJJ and Sir Martin Nourse: 6 May 2005

The applicant was employed by the respondent university from January 1995, and raised grievances in the following years amounting to protected disclosures. When, in 2003, the applicant decided to take voluntary redundancy, a compromise agreement, in a standard form used by the university, was entered into providing for termination of employment "in full and final satisfaction of all claims ... which the employee has or may have against the university ... arising out of or in connection with his employment ... or otherwise including in particular the following claims" and 11 particular kinds of claim, at common law, under the Employment Rights Act 1996 and under the discrimination Acts, were listed. On a complaint by the applicant against the university of detrimental treatment as a result of making the protected disclosures, the employment tribunal found, as a preliminary issue, that, as that was not one of the claims in the itemised list, applying section 203 of the 1996 Act, the applicant was not precluded from pursuing the complaint. The Employment Appeal Tribunal allowed the employer's appeal and ordered the originating application to be struck out.

The applicant appealed.

The Court of Appeal held:
Contractually, the agreement by the very general nature of the relevant term showed that the parties' intention was to settle all differences, actual and potential, arising under statute and at common law and was sufficiently wide to cover the applicant's complaint of detrimental treatment. But section 203(3)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, consistent with the legislative policy of protecting employees from signing away the right to bring employment tribunal proceedings under the Act except in cases where a number of closely defined conditions were satisfied and language of the section, required that "particular proceedings" be identified and particularised. The key question was how the compromise agreement related to the applicant's particular complaint; and it did not "relate to" the applicant's complaint of detrimental treatment under the Act, since it failed to state expressly the particular statutory provision or to supply a description of the legal nature or the factual basis of any proceedings "arising under statute" or to mention public interest disclosures or any detriment suffered by the applicant. The employment tribunal's conclusion was, therefore, correct and the matter should proceed to a full merits hearing.

The appeal was allowed.

Appearances: Ivan Hare (Shakespeares, Birmingham) for the applicant; Martin Fodder (Mills & Reeve, Cambridge) for the employer.