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Quirks in mod­ern awards #4: No over­time rates for casu­als in the Hor­ti­cul­ture Award 2010

The major­i­ty of employ­ees in Aus­tralia are cov­ered by an indus­try / occu­pa­tion spe­cif­ic mod­ern award. Whilst many of the awards con­tain sim­i­lar pro­vi­sions, in this series of occa­sion­al arti­cles we exam­ine unusu­al award claus­es which are some­times missed by employers. Most mod­ern awards pro­vide that all employ­ees – full-time, part-time…

The Art of the Deal Sheet: 10 Key Nego­ti­a­tion Points

Deal sheets, terms sheets, heads of agree­ments, let­ters of intent, mem­o­ran­dums of under­stand­ing, deal mem­os – what­ev­er you call them, these typ­i­cal­ly short and sim­ple doc­u­ments play a vital role in the direc­tion and out­come of a cor­po­rate transaction. From our expe­ri­ence, when nego­ti­at­ing a poten­tial deal and putting togeth­er a terms sheet for…

Brands as a Legal Asset

Intro­duc­tion Brands are an intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty asset. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they rarely appear on a com­pa­ny’s bal­ance sheet. As a con­se­quence, brands may often be inad­e­quate­ly iden­ti­fied, val­ued, pro­tect­ed and exploit­ed. Bear­ing this in mind, it is wise to insti­tute a pro­gram to pro­tect and nur­ture your brands. Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion It is impor­tant to car­ry out a reg­u­lar…

Thorne v Kennedy [2017] HCA 49

Back­ground The par­ties met over the inter­net in 2006. Ms Thorne, an East­ern Euro­pean woman, was 36 years old and was liv­ing in the Mid­dle East. She had no sub­stan­tial assets. Mr Kennedy was a 67 year old prop­er­ty devel­op­er, with assets worth between $18 mil­lion and $24 million.  Ms Thorne relo­cat­ed to Aus­tralia in…

Men­tal ill­ness in par­ent­ing matters

Each year at least 1 in 5 Aus­tralians over the age of 16 expe­ri­ence men­tal ill­ness. The most com­mon men­tal ill­ness­es are depres­sion and anx­i­ety and oth­er forms include bipo­lar dis­or­der and schizophrenia. It is com­mon for peo­ple to expe­ri­ence men­tal ill­ness dur­ing dif­fi­cult times in their lives such as sep­a­ra­tion and divorce…

It’s mine, I got it after we broke up

In fam­i­ly law dis­putes it is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that an inher­i­tance or oth­er large sum received after sep­a­ra­tion will be exclud­ed from the prop­er­ty pool to be divid­ed between the par­ties. This issue was dealt with in the recent case of Calvin & McTi­er [2017] FAM­CAFC 125. The Full Court of the…

I’m late com­ply­ing with Fam­i­ly Court Orders, no one will mind

Not nec­es­sar­i­ly. In a recent Fam­i­ly Law case the hus­band found out the hard way that he should not have delayed com­ply­ing with Court Orders for his prop­er­ty settlement. The case of Black­well & Scott [2017] FAM­CAFC 77 involved a cou­ple who at the end of their 10 year de fac­to rela­tion­ship agreed to a prop­er­ty…

Fam­i­ly law and caveats

Accord­ing to the Real Prop­er­ty Act, a per­son who claims a legal or equi­table estate or inter­est in land (‘caveator’) can lodge a caveat against the prop­er­ty of anoth­er (‘own­er’). This usu­al­ly hap­pens in the con­text of sep­a­ra­tion when one par­ty is not reg­is­tered on the title and is fear­ful that the oth­er…

Sex­u­al Harass­ment in the Post-Wein­stein Age What’s Next for Employers? 

The Post-Wein­stein Age The down­fall of one-time Hol­ly­wood heavy­weight Har­vey Wein­stein is increas­ing­ly look­ing like a sem­i­nal event, caus­ing a par­a­digm shift in the way sex­u­al harass­ment (and the bul­ly­ing and vic­tim­i­sa­tion that often accom­pa­nies such behav­iour) is addressed in the community. The Wein­stein alle­ga­tions opened the flood­gates, act­ing as a cat­a­lyst for numer­ous claims…

Prin­ci­pal Con­trac­tors: The Rules of Engagement

The role of prin­ci­pal con­trac­tor is crit­i­cal in man­ag­ing the work health and safe­ty risks on con­struc­tion projects. Even so, mis­un­der­stand­ings still arise as to the appli­ca­tion of the rules relat­ing to the engage­ment of prin­ci­pal con­trac­tors under the Work Health & Safe­ty Reg­u­la­tions 2017 (NSW) (WHS Reg­u­la­tions). (These rules are in…

Lack of pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean unfair dismissal

In arti­cles and pre­sen­ta­tions on unfair dis­missal the impor­tance of pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness is a recur­ring theme.  This reflects sec­tions 387 (b) and (c ) of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) which stip­u­late that, in con­sid­er­ing whether it is sat­is­fied that a dis­missal was harsh, unjust or unrea­son­able, the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC)…

Long ser­vice leave and res­ig­na­tion because of ​“domes­tic or oth­er press­ing necessity”

Intro­duc­tionAn issue which aris­es from time to time is, whether long ser­vice leave is payable where an employ­ee leaves their employ­ment due to some press­ing per­son­al domes­tic cir­cum­stance. Can an employ­er decline to pay long ser­vice leave in this sit­u­a­tion?An employ­ee’s enti­tle­ment to long ser­vice leave is reg­u­lat­ed by State…

Work­place Rela­tion­ships: The Legal Position

With recent devel­op­ments in Aus­tralian pol­i­tics, and the con­tin­ued focus on the inter­na­tion­al #MeToo move­ment, a top­ic that is present­ly being wide­ly dis­cussed is that of work­place relationships. There is a com­mon per­cep­tion that they are now, in all cas­es, imper­mis­si­ble. A few media com­men­ta­tors have lament­ed that they met their part­ner at…

The top five mis­takes employ­ers make when ter­mi­nat­ing employ­ment: No.1 Giv­ing inad­e­quate notice

When dis­miss­ing a full-time or part-time employ­ee — oth­er than one being dis­missed for seri­ous mis­con­duct – the Fair Work Act 2009 pro­vides for a manda­to­ry min­i­mum peri­od of notice to be pro­vid­ed (or an equiv­a­lent pay­ment made in lieu of notice). The require­ment to give notice or pay­ment in lieu exists regard­less…

The top five mis­takes employ­ers make when ter­mi­nat­ing employ­ment: No.2 Incor­rect ter­mi­na­tion pay 

The rules on ter­mi­na­tion pay are extreme­ly com­plex and it is no sur­prise that this is an area where errors often occur. Fre­quent areas of con­fu­sion include: is annu­al leave paid out on ter­mi­na­tion? (Yes); what about per­son­al leave? (No); what about long ser­vice leave? (It depends!). For some time there was…