Closer attention must be paid by all who sign contracts of employment as they can severely circumscribe your rights.

Where you do not receive a letter of appointment,only a letter of appointment or a simple contract of employment,this may be better for the employee.One reason is that where they do not deal with notice this leaves it open to the courts to imply a term of reasonable notice which may be as much as 12 months depending upon length of service.

Where you have been working for a company for a number of years and at the date of inception of your employment your circumstances were as above and subsequently you are provided with a comprehensive contract of employment to sign, do not, as it may extinguish your common law reasonable notice rights and introduce some very restrictive post employment restraints.In all such cases obtain informed legal advice before proceeding.

It appears that the court will consider the cascading clauses to be valid when the clauses are clear and unambiguous which does not require the intervention of the court in interpreting the cascading clauses.In addition, the court will also consider the period in which the restraint of trade is to operate. The court held that a 12 month period was reasonable for the protection of the business.The question of reasonableness is to be decided upon the facts of each particular case.

One would need to consider the issue in relation to cascading clauses prior to them being inserted into the contract of employment.A recent trend in the employment circle has been the introduction of a clause known as a cascading clause. A cascading clause is defined as a clause that provides a number of options in regards to time and areas of coverage of the restraint of trade clause.

Recent court decision has considered the validity of cascading clauses in an employment contract and in a recent decision the court considered the issue whether the cascading clauses can be severed from the rest of the cascading clauses. The court will consider each clause separately and whether the clauses are inconsistent with each other. In the above case the court decided that the clauses could be read separately and therefore valid. Other cases have concluded that the cascading clauses are invalid as the employee is unaware of the nature of the restraint and this would causes difficulty in the assessment of the validity of such a clause.