Lawyer loses retirement age legal battle
25th April 2012
Posted by Richard McKenna
A lawyer's claim that being forced to retire at the age of 65 amounted to workplace discrimination has been rejected by the Supreme Court.
Leslie Seldon, a partner at Kent firm Clarkson Wright & Jakes, claimed that he had been the victim of age discrimination after his employer enacted a compulsory retirement clause requiring him to leave the firm shortly after his 65th birthday.
The clause was included in the firm's deed of partnership but runs contrary to recently introduced government legislation designed to stop UK employers from compulsorily retiring workers.
Mr Seldon appealed after his claim of age discrimination was originally turned down by an Employment Tribunal.
However, the appeal was unanimously dismissed by five Supreme Court justices today (April 25th), who ruled that the decision to force Mr Seldon to retire, although a directly discriminatory measure, was justifiable as it was founded on legitimate social policy aims.
These aims, as argued by the employer, included ensuring younger workers had the opportunity of becoming a partner after a reasonable period, facilitating planning by having a realistic long-term expectation as to when vacancies will arise and limiting the need to expel partners for poor performance.
However, the case was referred back to the Employment Tribunal to decide whether 65 was an appropriate age to force Mr Seldon to retire.
The landmark case is likely to raise concerns employers will be able to use the ruling to force out older workers.
But Clive Howard, partner in the employment team at law firm Russell Jones & Walker, said compulsory retirement would only be lawful in very specific circumstances.
"Employers should not form the view that this means it will be lawful to force staff to retire at 65 up and down the country," he said.
"There were specific factors which applied to this small law firm in Kent, which will not be relevant to every organisation."
The judges stressed that employers "must think carefully about whether it really needs to have a policy that directly or indirectly discriminates against people based on their age" and that "such policies must be justified on a case-by-case basis".
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