Future losses are always interesting when considering compensatory awards. There are many factors to consider such as the area in which the claimant worked, do they have a specialist skill, are the skills transferable, what is the market like and so on and so forth. It is not uncommon to project future losses for up to 12 months that the Respondent should be accountable for.
In the case of Wardle v Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank it was decided that when the Tribunal was calculating future losses, they should assess the loss suffered up to a certain point in time when an employee would be likely to secure another job on similar terms. The current practice of awarding compensation up to the point when there was certainty that the employee would secure another job on equivalent terms. This is a lovely, and unfortunately uncommon, employer friendly decision based on the following information:
The Claimant had never worked for any company longer that 5 years and he was still in contact with head hunters. On the basis of these facts it was decided that there was an 80% chance that the Claimant would have left his employment with the Respondent after he collect loyalty premiums. Slightly ironic and a touch cheeky of the Claimant to potentially claim for more but luckily the judges stepped in and applied some long overdue logic to proceedings. It was concluded that career long loss should only be awarded in exceptional circumstances and this situation was not one of them.
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