Employer bound by retirement age in contract

The Labour Appeal Court recently heard a case concerning the issue of retirement age. The questions that arose, reports the Daily Dispatch, were whether an employee can be compelled to retire and, if so, what age is regarded as the retirement age. South African law provides that it is unfair to dismiss an employee based on age unless he or she has reached the normal or agreed retirement age for a person employed in that capacity. The retirement age may have been agreed in the employment contract and then the employee can be required to retire when the specified age is reached. But if the age has not been agreed to, then the employer cannot simply fix the age for retirement for existing employees. Trying to do so would be a unilateral change to terms and conditions of employment, which would have no effect in law.
Full report in the Daily Dispatch

 

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US ruling on children exposed to abuse at home

New York State Court of Appeals has ruled that children who have been exposed to abuse at home cannot be taken from their parents and placed in foster care. The ruling, reports The New York Times, formalises specific standards for removing children from homes where domestic abuse occurs, requiring that authorities exhaust alternatives and insisting that the possible threat to the child's health or welfare be imminent. The courts, in a unanimous decision, said it was not acceptable to take children out of their homes solely because they had seen the mother being beaten, suggesting that it would unfairly punish innocent women and even harm the children themselves. Instead, it said the authorities would have to show that the mother was indifferent to the psychological harm that repeated exposure to beatings caused the child in order to justify asking the courts to consider a removal.

British judge says farmer was right to shoot burglar

The debate over how much force a person can use to defend their property, ongoing in SA, has also been revived in Britain where a judge said a farmer who shot a burglar acted reasonably. The Telegraph reports Judge Andrew Hamilton, sentencing the burglar to seven years in jail for a string of similar crimes, said it was ‘a pity’ that prosecutors had even thought of bringing charges of assault against the farmer, Kenneth Faulkner. The case has echoes of the conviction for murder of Tony Martin, a Norfolk farmer, after he shot dead a burglar at his farmhouse in 1999. The Court of Appeal ruled that Martin had used unreasonable force but reduced his conviction to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after he had suffered numerous burglaries.
Full report in The Telegraph

 

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Baby must be allowed to die - judge

In the second right-to-live case in as many months in the UK, the Family Division of a British High Court has again ruled in favour of doctors who had asked the court to allow them to withhold life-saving treatment for a terminally ill baby. The Independent quotes the judge as ruling Luke Winston-Jones, aged nine months, who has a rare genetic disorder, should not be placed on a ventilator if he stops breathing. His mother, Ruth, had refused to give her consent to withdrawal of treatment, claiming her son was a ‘fighter’ and accusing doctors of ‘playing God’ by deciding to let him die. Last month, another judge ruled that one-year-old Charlotte Wyatt, who was born premature and has severe mental and physical handicaps, should not be resuscitated if she stops breathing. Experts say more such cases may have to be decided by the courts because of advances in the treatment of sick babies.

 

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Transgender Bill proposed in New Zealand

A transsexual MP in New Zealand, Georgina Beyer, has drafted legislation that will protect people who change their gender from discrimination. `The Human Rights (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill, reports the New Zealand Herald, provides for ‘gender identity’ to be included as one of the prohibited grounds of discrimination in section 21 of the Human Rights Act 1993. Under the Act, people are not allowed to discriminate on grounds such as race or sex.

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