UT (Tax & Chancery) UT-2024-000044 - [2025] UKUT 00094 (TCC)

Mr Firth submitted that the FTT assumed without checking that the Appellant accepted that clause 2.6 of the Terms gave Sky the right to require (through the Appellant) Mr Thompson to travel to any location without objection. The FTT was wrong. It failed to understand that on the Appellant’s interpretation that Mr Thompson only had to provide services when the Company agreed meant that the Appellant/Mr Thompson did not have to agree to any occasion for the provision of services that would involve travelling to somewhere he did not want to go.

He contended that the FTT’s interpretation was, once again, absurd. By the FTT’s logic, the meaning of the contract (ignoring the “reasonableness” clauses the FTT again invoked to avoid absurdity) is that Sky could require Mr Thompson to go and work in some far-flung part of the world (and, indeed, require that to be done full time, all the time, doing whatever Sky demanded).