Ed Cotton

He is a Partner within the Employment team which is ranked Tier 1 in Legal 500.

Ed has over 25 years’ experience as an employment lawyer, advising employer clients on a wide range of strategic, complex and sensitive employment law issues, but also on business-as-usual matters. He has particular experience dealing with restrictive covenant issues and team moves, both in the High Court and arbitration.

Ed regularly advises on executive appointments and terminations, the defence of litigation in Employment Tribunals, reorganisation and redundancy and TUPE issues relating to corporate transactions and outsourcing.

He acts for a range of clients including retailers, professional services firms, recruitment businesses and clients in the manufacturing, transport and leisure sectors.
Ed qualified in 1996.

Jurisdiction: England and Wales

• Advising a manufacturing business on a large scale restructuring and redundancy process;
• Acting for a bank negotiating complex TUPE provisions in outsourcing agreement;
• Acting for a retail client in the defence of multiple race discrimination/unfair dismissal claims;
• Successfully defending an interim Injunction application to enforce non-compete post termination of employment restrictions in a client’s contract of employment. The application was brought in the High Court against an individual director following his move to a competitor business. (Sparta Global Limited (1) Condor Topco Limited (2) -v- (1) Ben Hayes (2) Kubrick Group Limited [2024] EWHC 100 (KB))
• Acting for a large national recruitment business in pursuing a high value claim for damages against a former key employee who was alleged to have breached their post-termination restrictions in their contract of employment. Successfully pursued damages and costs.
• Acting for five individual defendants who were former employees of a recruitment agency as well as acting for their new employer, a competitor recruitment agency. The claimant alleged that the individual defendants were subject to enforceable non-competition covenants which precluded them from working for their new employer and sought an interim injunction preventing them from continuing to do so. Before Mr Justice Snowden, the Vice Chancellor of the County Palatine of Lancaster, TLT were successful in dismissing the application with a costs order made in favour of the defendants. [Affinity Workforce Solutions Ltd v McCann [2019] EWHC 2829 (Ch)]