SPARE‐TIME ACTIVITIES OF EMPLOYEES
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1946.tb01005.x |
| Date | 01 July 1946 |
| Published date | 01 July 1946 |
| Author | O. Kahn‐Freund |
145
SPARE-TIME ACTIVITIES
OF
EMPLOYEES
QUESTIONS
of great legal and sociological interest were at
stake in
Hivac, Ltd.
v.
Park
Royal
Scientific Instruments,
Ltd.,
119461
1
All
E.R.
350.
The plaintiffs were manu-
facturers of thermionic valves, including
‘
midget valves
’
which are used for hearing aids. At one time they were the
only British firm to supply these midget valves with respect
to which they seem to have enjoyed a monopoly in the
British market. The defendants, two of whose directors had
formerly held responsible positions in the employment of the
plaintiffs, set up
a
manufacture of hearing aids, including
midget valves, which they intended to put on the market at
a
price lower than that demanded by the plaintiffs. The
assembling of midget valves-highly complicated instruments
in
a
very small compass--requires the employment of the
most skilled manual workers, of the sort of trained labour
which can be expected to be scarce
at
almost any time and
which, in war-time, must have been practically unobtainable.
The plaintiffs’ factory was
a
scheduled undertaking under the
Essential Work Order.
According to the evidence before the Court of Appeal the
defendant company and those associated with
it
induced five
of
the plaintiffs’ highly skilled workmen to assist in the
assembling of valves
at
the defendants’ factory on Sundays,
i.e.,
during what was, from the plaintiffs’ point of view, the
workers’ spare time. The workmen did not, according to
their own affidavits, receive any wages from the defen-
dants, but
‘
payment by way of expenses for their work
’.
Morton
L.J.
was not
‘
quite sure what that means
’.
One
may be permitted to suspect that here,
as
so often in different
contexts, the term ‘expenses’ was tainted by
a
hue
of
deliberate ambiguity.
The plaintiffs asked for, and obtained from the Court of
Appeal (reversing an order of Cohen
J.)
an interlocutory
injunction restraining the defendants from continuing what
in the view of the Court amounted
to
an inducement to
commit
a
breach of contract. The workmen themselves were
not parties to the suit.
The question-the decisive question-whether the work-
men’s conduct
was
a
breach of their contract of employment
with the plaintiffs was answered in the affirmative by the
VOL.
9
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