EAT Unfair Dismissal : Compensation – The Employment Tribunal found that Claimants had been unfairly dismissed rejecting Respondent’s case that the dismissal was for redundancy and finding that it was procedurally unfair in any event. In the course of the judgment on liability the ET made a finding that R ‘had determined that its dire financial problems meant that it needed to make savings in the form of reducing overheads the biggest of which were staff and in particular the costs of employing the Claimants’; it also remarked that it may have been a case where ‘some other substantial reason’ could have been argued successfully but that such a case was not advanced.
At the remedies hearing the ET made a compensatory award based on the proposition that if they had not been dismissed Cs would have remained in employment up to retirement and notwithstanding their findings in the liability Judgment they gave no consideration to any reduction to reflect the chance that the Cs could have been properly dismissed at the time they were in fact dismissed or at some time before retirement date. In so doing they rejected R’s case on balance of probabilities but failed to consider whether there was such a ‘chance’ and so erred.
The case is therefore remitted to the same ET on the question of compensation with a direction that the ET should consider the position in the light of any further submissions but that no further evidence should be received.
Judges:
Shanks J
Citations:
[2013] UKEAT 0096 – 12 – 1302
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 17 November 2022; Ref: scu.472842