Lucy Stones’ has recently finalised a Settlement Agreement for her client. The client was employed by a company who approached her with a view to offering her a Settlement Agreement but in return, her employment would terminate.
The circumstances
Lucy explained that prior to reviewing the contractual clauses to the Settlement Agreement, it was important to know what the circumstances had been leading up to receiving the same. Lucy’s client explained that she had been absent from work for some time, due to ill-health. However, the nature of her ill-health was work related stress. The client had submitted a Formal Grievance in mid 2019 but the company had failed to address any of her concerns and so she continued to be unfit to return to work. At the beginning of 2020, the company approached her to see whether she wished to enter into a Settlement Agreement and for her employment to terminate by reason of redundancy.
Lucy explained to her client that she may have a good claim for Constructive Unfair Dismissal as she considered that her employers continued failure to address the concerns raised as unreasonable and represented a breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidence. In light of this, Lucy wished to consider the compensation payments which were currently being offered to her. On doing this, it was noted that her client was seemingly receiving a significant increase to compensation over and above her statutory entitlements. However, Lucy asked to see whether her client had any enhanced contractual entitlements should her employment terminate by reason of redundancy. She did and so Lucy considered the enhancement was a figure she was contractually entitled to receive, in any event, should redundancy be the cause of her dismissal.
The outcome
On that basis, Lucy was instructed to engage in without prejudice correspondence with the company (this is private communication that cannot be openly referred to). Lucy sought an increase to her client’s compensation payments and set out the justification as to why this request was reasonable. The company accepted the increase to compensation and also covered all of Lucy’s additional legal fees to achieve this. The end result was that Lucy’s client received one years’ gross salary. A fantastic result!
Lucy’s client was thrilled with the outcome and kindly wrote the following words;
“Can I take this opportunity to thank Lucy for making the whole procedure painless and helping me obtain a fair settlement. Thank you once again for all of your help Lucy!”
How can we help you?
If you have any employment law issues, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01522 440512. We will happily help with any employment law issues you have.
Tags: compensation payments constructive unfair dismissal employment law employment solicitor ex-gratia payments Lincs Law lucy stones redundancy settlement agreement