Posted: Friday, 4 January 2019 @ 13:43
In my capacity as an employment lawyer whether I am acting for the employee or employer one of the key things you do is to put a value on what the employee is likely to recover if the case goes to Court.
The starting point to do this is to try to assess the highest value the employee can obtain and will involve consideration of:
Basic Award - This is the same as the equivalent redundant payments as set down by law and is linked to the age, salary and service of the employee.
Loss of statutory rights - Depending on how long the employee has worked this at most can be £500.
Compensatory award - this is linked to the loss of earnings if the employee had she or he not been dismissed. If no discrimination can be proved the cap is one year’s salary or approximately £80k (the Lower applies).
It is worth remembering that the employee has a duty to mitigate his or her losses.
if discrimination is successfully proved this can open the value of the claim further by the employee having no financial cap and being able to add an injury to feelings claim to the potential award.
This is just a broad overview of how to calculate and value a claim.
On top of this a lawyer and the client shoutd be thinking about other aspects namely does the other side want to settle this case more than me and how would they feel in taking this to Court.