Buchanan v Tilcon Engineerng Ltd: SCS 1983

The Lord President of the Court of Session said: ‘ In the event the appellant, apart from throwing out the suggestion that he might have been victimised because of dislike, merely expressed his concern that others, with even less seniority than he and employed in the same work (labouring) had been kept on. In this situation where no other complaints were made by the appellant all that the respondents had to do was to prove that their method of selection was fair in general terms and that it had been applied reasonably in the case of the appellant by the senior official responsible for taking the decision. As was pointed out by Phillips J in Cox v Wildt Mellor Bromley Ltd [1978] IRLR 157 it is quite sufficient for an employer in a case such as this to call witnesses of reasonable seniority to explain the circumstances in which the dismissal of an employee came about and it was not necessary to dot every ‘i’ and to cross every ‘t’ or to anticipate every possible complaint which might be made.”

Judges:

Lord Emslie

Citations:

[1983] IRLR 417

Jurisdiction:

Scotland

Cited by:

CitedBritish Aerospace plc v Green and Others CA 18-Apr-1995
The employer was to make 530 members of its staff redundant. Each staff member was assessed and scored. The claimants said that the method of selection was unfair, and sought disclosure of the scores of all employees.
Held: It was wrong to . .
CitedBritish Aerospace plc v Green and Others CA 18-Apr-1995
The employer was to make 530 members of its staff redundant. Each staff member was assessed and scored. The claimants said that the method of selection was unfair, and sought disclosure of the scores of all employees.
Held: It was wrong to . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Employment

Updated: 18 July 2022; Ref: scu.396775