Legislation
Case law: how relevant are previous incidents to unfair dismissal?
30/06/2010 10:37
Employers will welcome guidance on whether a previous incident, which did not trigger disciplinary proceedings, can be taken into account when assessing whether a subsequent dismissal of an employee following a similar incident is fair, in the light of a recent ruling.
In this case, an employee was dismissed as a consequence of an incident at work. Her employer cited, as one of the grounds for dismissal, a previous similar incident that had not led to disciplinary proceedings. The employee claimed unfair dismissal, and her claim was accepted by an employment tribunal.
However, the employer appealed on the grounds that the tribunal had wrongly regarded the earlier incident as involving a warning which had not been conducted through the appropriate procedure, and that the tribunal was wrong to find that the employer had rolled up the two incidents in considering the seriousness of the employee’s behaviour.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) allowed the employer’s appeal, ruling that the earlier incident was relevant to the later one: even though the employee was not disciplined for the first incident, she was dismissed for the second, and the background to it was the earlier incident. As a result, the tribunal had been wrong to criticise the employer for paying attention to it.
In substituting its own judgment for that of the employer’s management, the tribunal had erred in reaching its decision, and so the EAT overturned the finding of unfair dismissal.
Operative date
- Immediate