Ugandan employers once needed only a calculator and the employment contract to estimate their liability for wrongful dismissal: pay in lieu of notice, any accrued benefits, and little more.
Ugandan employers once needed only a calculator and the employment contract to estimate their liability for wrongful dismissal: pay in lieu of notice, any accrued benefits, and little more. Today, that certainty has evaporated. A line of decisions from the courts has expanded damages for wrongful dismissal far beyond the orthodox common law limits articulated in Addis v Gramophone Co. The result is a jurisprudence so inconsistent that advising both employer and employee on the consequences of wrongful dismissal has become guesswork. This legal ambiguity has fueled a surge in employment litigation, driven by employees pursuing large payouts and employers fighting to protect their financial viability.
The common law anchor
Addis settled three propositions that dominated common law thinking for nearly a century:
(a) Damages for wrongful dismissal are confined to losses flowing from the breach of contract (usually salary for the notice period and contractual benefits);
(b) No award is made for injured feelings, loss of reputation, or the manner of dismissal;
(c) Future or speculative earnings are irrecoverable.
The House of Lords in England has repeatedly reaffirmed Addis, most recently in Johnson v Unisys [2003] and Edwards v Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Trust [2012]. Jurisdictions that...
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