What did the case involve?
An employee and an employer had both filed a termination request together with ancillary requests with the subdistrict court judge. The employee thereby requested to be awarded the transitional allowance, fair compensation in the gross amount of €100,000, and, briefly stated, to be released from his obligations under the non-solicitation clause. The employer requested (conditional) termination of the employment contract.
By judgment dated 7 July 2016 the subdistrict court judge allowed both parties’ termination requests. With regard to the employee’s request, the judge terminated the employment contract as from 1 August 2016 without awarding any compensation. However, the judge disallowed the ancillary requests and gave the employee the opportunity to withdraw his termination request. At the employer’s (conditional) counter-request, the judge terminated the employment contract as from 1 September 2016 and ruled that the employee was entitled to the transitional allowance.
Withdrawal of the termination request and appeal
The employee exercised his right to withdraw his application. He then filed an appeal with the Court of Appeal against the disallowance of his ancillary requests and repeated his request to be awarded fair compensation and to be released from his obligations under the non-solicitation clause.
Pending the appeal, the parties themselves solved part of their dispute and agreed that the employee would be released from his obligations under the non-solicitation clause. But they failed to reach agreement on the fair compensation.
In the employer’s opinion the employee had no cause of action because he had withdrawn his application. As a result of that withdrawal the ancillary requests set out in the application also no longer existed. If the employee had wanted to claim fair compensation, he should have filed a formal request to that effect in response to the employer’s independent counter-request.
Juridisch advies nodig?
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No inextricable connection
The Court of Appeal did not subscribe to the employer’s line of reasoning. In the Court of Appeal’s opinion, the employee did not automatically withdraw his ancillary requests when he withdrew his termination request. Those ancillary requests were not “inextricably connected” to the requested termination and the employee had not expressly and unequivocally waived those ancillary requests when he withdrew his termination request. Moreover, the employer apparently failed to notice that the employee expressly claimed fair compensation of €100,000 gross in his defence against the conditional counter-request in the first instance if his employment contract was terminated at the employer’s request.
The Court of Appeal therefore allowed the employee’s appeal. That was of little avail to the employee: the Court of Appeal also disallowed his request for fair compensation and ordered the employee to pay the costs of the appeal proceedings.
You can find the entire ruling (in Dutch) here.
