EAT Unfair Dismissal: Reason for Dismissal Including Substantial Other Reason – UNFAIR DISMISSAL – Reasonableness of dismissal – PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE – Appellate jurisdiction/reasons/Burns-Barke – The Claimant was dismissed for three matters. In one of these (probably the most serious) the investigation was seriously flawed; and a second was raised with the Claimant for the first time at the disciplinary hearing itself. The Employment Judge thought that the third was one which the Respondent was entitled to view as gross misconduct, and held the dismissal not unfair; but the evidence before the Tribunal was that the employer did not view it as sufficiently serious. Evidence was given by the Respondent that the second was serious enough to merit dismissal, but the Employment Judge did not deal with the procedural criticisms made in the ET1, nor accept that was the Respondent’s view, nor evaluate it.
Held: the Employment Judge should have applied section 98 Employment Rights Act and had regard to the actual reasons the employer had for dismissal, rather than the justifiable reasons he could have had; the actual reasons included the first matter, and needed to be viewed and evaluated as a whole and not by isolating artificially those parts in respect of which the procedure was less troubling from the whole. Remitted to a fresh Tribunal. Observations made about the proper approach where an employer actually relies on a number of distinct grounds for dismissal but an Employment Tribunal considers only some are justified (substantively or procedurally).
Langstaff P J
[2014] UKEAT 0310 – 14 – 0512
Bailii
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 27 December 2021; Ref: scu.541964
