"We now refer to the provisions in the contracts of employment of all the claimants whereby they could enjoy enhanced contractual rights. Although in the particular circumstances of this case, the said provisions in the contracts of employment were not operated in such a way as to confer advantage on the claimants, it is easy to see that in certain circumstances the rights conferred by the contract could be extremely valuable, especially in the case of a long-serving , highly paid employee. The claimants had a valuable expectation that, if they were to be threatened with redundancy they would be generously compensated which valuable expectation they have lost, which expectation we value at£5,000 . We considered carefully whether this sum should be the subject of reduction, but concluded that it should not. It is difficult to see under what circumstances the claimants would have been dismissed by the respondents for a reason other than redundancy. The whole point of the provisions providing for enhanced payment is that they operate or are intended to operate, on the occasion of a redundancy, and the respondents (sic) have lost the valuable expectation that on dismissal for the reason that was most likely to occur the said provisions would be operated to their advantage."
"18. The respondents reserved the right to require an employee dismissed as redundant to sign a compromise agreement as a condition of making an enhanced payment."
"Although there can be no doubt that all three claimants are extremely able, it must also be assumed, given the responsibility entrusted to the other candidates for the posts for which the claimants could reasonably have been expected to compete, and the fact that those other candidates have performed well in those posts, that the holders of the posts are extremely able, and it cannot be assumed that the appointment of the claimants to such posts would have been a foregone conclusion. In all the circumstances, we put the claimants' chances of being appointed to the said posts at 40 per cent"
"We also take the view that, though the respondents could not reasonably adopt the criterion for selection that they did, they could reasonably attach weight to the fact that those appointed to the posts were experienced in the procedures that they were expected to operate and had contacts formal and informal both within and out with the Chivas organisation that would be valuable to the respondents. Accordingly we took the view that claimants would have been at a slight disadvantage in any competition for posts and have put their chances of success at 40 per cent."
" At first sight it may appear rather surprising that we have put the chances of all the claimants at 40 per cent, and it may appear highly improbable that they would all have had an equal chance of success, had the respondents acted fairly. We accept that there has been something of a blunt instrument about our approach but we do not think that, given the paucity of information put before us, we have a great deal of choice."
"53. The question is not whether the tribunal can predict with confidence all that would have occurred; rather it is whether it can make any assessment with sufficient confidence about what is likely to have happened, using its common sense, experience and sense of justice. It may not be able to complete the jigsaw but may have sufficient pieces for some conclusions to be drawn as to how the picture would have developed. For example there may insufficient evidence or it may be too unreliable, to enable a tribunal to say with any precision whether an employee would, on the balance of probabilities have been dismissed, and yet sufficient evidence for the tribunal to conclude that on any view there must have been some realistic chance that he would have been. Some assessment must be made of that risk when calculating the compensation even though it will be a difficult and to some extent speculative exercise."