Addis V Gramophone Co Ltd - Significance

Significance

The case was met with immediate disapproval in a number of quarters. Sir Frederic Pollock, the editor of the Law Quarterly Review, and contrasted "an artificial rule or mere authority" to "the rationale of the matter" as follows.

In the case of wrongful dismissal, a harsh and humiliating way of doing it, by the imputation which such a dismissal conveys, may make it very difficult for the servant to obtain a new situation. That was how the court looked at it in Maw v Jones 25 QBD 107; not as a mere personal slight or affront. So in Addis v Gramophone Co Ltd the plaintiff was dismissed summarily from an important post in India, and the whole management taken out of his hands in a way which could not but import obloquy among the commercial community of India, and as a result permanent loss. It was no mere rudeness or want of consideration. But the majority of the House of Lords thought the damages in question were really for defamation, and could be recovered only in a separate action.

Slowly the case has been repealed as a matter of contract and employment law, illustrated by Farley v Skinner and Johnson v Unisys Ltd.

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