AN ACADEMIC locked out of her office by NUI Maynooth (NUIM)authorities while out for lunch during an ongoing dispute over her employment yesterday lost her High Court application for injunctions against the university.
Dr Ann Buckley brought proceedings against NUIM over her employment from 2003 on two successive fixed-term contracts as a research fellow in the department of music at the university.
A rights commissioner in August 2008 upheld her claim of entitlement to a contract of indefinite duration after expiry of the second contact in September 2008. However, the university appealed that decision and, before the appeal was determined by the Labour Court, issued her with statutory redundancy in August 2008.
In his judgment refusing Dr Buckley’s application, Mr Justice Roderick Murphy found she had failed to make out a strong case that implied terms of mutual trust and confidence in contracts of employment assisted her claim of entitlement to an indefinite contract. Such implied terms, in the context of dismissal, only assisted in very limited circumstances.
He ruled that there was only a subsisting contract of employment between the parties if the Labour Court upholds the rights commissioner’s ruling. NUIM was not bound by the ruling unless and until that happened.
The university had sought to pre-empt the Labour Court decision by issuing Dr Buckley with statutory redundancy, he said. While it was not for the court to decide the validity or otherwise of that purported redundancy, he was not persuaded the common law assisted Dr Buckley’s claim of entitlement to a contract of indefinite duration.
