Executive Summary:
Despite consistent direction from the United States Supreme Court that courts should look at “all the circumstances” in determining whether a workplace environment is sufficiently hostile or abusive to give rise to an actionable claim of harassment, see, e.g., Faragher v. City of Boca Raton (1998), the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a supervisor who called an African-American employee a “porch monkey” twice in a 24–hour period transformed the workplace […]

Some recent decisions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) have put an end to the long standing uncertainty, and administrative burden, placed on employers since the ground breaking decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) in the “Woolworths” litigation on the collective redundancy legislation.

The latest of these ECJ decisions was announced last week and concerned the fall-out from the insolvency of the women’s retailer Bonmarché in 2012, and in particular, the closure of […]