How are debts owed to family members dealt with in divorce proceedings?
The first question for the court to determine is whether the debts are legitimate, and this is a...
The Court of Appeal has reinstated an employment tribunal's decision that employees of an insolvent football club, dismissed by the club's administrator shortly before the business was sold, were not automatically unfairly dismissed under TUPE 2006. The tribunal had been entitled to conclude that the dismissals, although connected with the subsequent TUPE transfer, were carried out for an "economic, technical or organisational reason entailing changes in the workforce" (ETO reason).
The claimants' dismissals were designed to ensure that costs were reduced to enable the club to continue to trade. This was an ETO reason that could be distinguished from the administrators' ultimate objective of selling the club as a going concern. Due to the policy of encouraging corporate rescue, care must be taken before characterising dismissals by an administrator as an illegitimate manipulation of the TUPE regime.