Dismissal
David Malamatenios and Georgina Kyriacou are partners, and Krishna Santra, Colin Makin and Sandra Martins are associates at Colman Coyle Solicitors. They round up the latest rulings.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that the employer's decision to restrict a redundancy selection to one employee when there were other employees doing the same job who could have been put in a redundancy selection pool made her dismissal unfair.
A Court of Appeal judge has taken the unusual step of criticising employers that are too quick to suspend employees accused of wrongdoing, after an NHS trust suspended and reported to the police two long-serving nurses who were accused of using inappropriate methods to restrain a violent patient.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that the employer was justified in deciding who would be chosen for voluntary redundancy on the basis of who would cost the least to make redundant, despite this criterion being indirectly discriminatory against a particular group of older workers.
The Supreme Court has held that, in deciding whether or not an employee who works overseas can claim unfair dismissal, the test is whether or not the connection between Great Britain and the employment is sufficiently strong to overcome the general rule that the place of employment is decisive.
In this case, the employer plotted to dismiss an employee on "trumped up" charges, but he was vindicated by an employment tribunal that saw through the employer's sham disciplinary process.
In Oudahar v Esporta Group Ltd [2011] IRLR 730 EAT, the EAT held that a dismissal could be automatically unfair for a reason related to health and safety even though the employer genuinely did not share the employee's belief that a situation was dangerous, and dismissed him for his repeated failure to undertake a task that he thought was unsafe.
Employers should not be too hasty in holding a disciplinary hearing in an employee's absence, as this case demonstrates.
This case is a good example of how the dismissal of an employee for a failure to follow an important protocol or rule can be unfair where the protocol or rule was not communicated effectively in the first place.
The Court of Appeal has held that, for there to be an automatic unfair dismissal under TUPE, there does not need to have been a particular transfer or transferee in existence or in contemplation at the time of the dismissal.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to dismissal.