gm_glowackiEAT2011
EAT Unfair Dismissal : Reasonableness of Dismissal – Unfair dismissal. Employee summarily dismissed for gross breach of health and safety procedures. Employment Tribunal would have found the dismissal ‘fair’ but for the different treatment of another employee who, a year earlier, had also been guilty of a gross breach of health and safety procedures but had not been summarily dismissed for misconduct. The Tribunal was not satisfied that the difference in treatment had been explained by the employer.
Appeal allowed. On the Tribunal’s own findings, it had accepted as credible and reasonable the employer’s explanation that the reason why the earlier incident had not also resulted in immediate dismissal for misconduct was that that employee had been very seriously injured. So serious was that injury that he was unable to take part in a disciplinary process and so was dismissed on capability grounds. But for the injury, the employer’s evidence was that there would have been a summary dismissal for misconduct.
Held: that was a sufficient basis upon which any reasonable employer might have considered it appropriate to have treated the two employees differently, given the range of responses reasonably open to an employer faced with those facts.
Luba QC
[2011] UKEAT 0139 – 11 – 2209
Bailii
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 01 November 2021; Ref: scu.448104