In this case, the employer failed to meet its legal obligations to an employee who was a reservist returning from deployment in Afghanistan. The case was complicated by the fact that it was a client's refusal to have the employee back on site that resulted in his dismissal.
In this case, a small employer had to deal with a familiar problem for employers: what to do if employees' behaviour becomes unprofessional because they have fallen out with each other.
The employer in this case took an extremely heavy-handed and, at times, frankly bizarre, approach to allegations that an employee "fraudulently" took one day's sick leave after he claimed that he had been stabbed in the finger by a syringe when sorting post.
The NHS trust in this case unfairly treated two relatively minor criminal convictions as an adequate reason to dismiss a worker, in a case that is a cautionary tale for employers that treat a criminal conviction as an automatic reason for dismissal.
A civilian police worker unsuccessfully claimed unfair dismissal and disability discrimination after she lost her job for a dangerous driving conviction. This is an example of an employer legitimately dismissing a worker who has been convicted of a criminal offence outside work.
In this well-publicised case, the employer was in the unenviable position of having to decide whether or not an employee who had been charged with, but not yet tried for, murder should be dismissed.
An unfortunate situation arose for this small employer when a recruitment consultant was made redundant after she had informed it, just two weeks into her new job, that she was pregnant. She claimed sex discrimination and unfair dismissal after seeing an advert shortly after her redundancy stating that the company was seeking recruitment consultants.
In this case, the industrial tribunal in Northern Ireland described a small employer's decision to dismiss a young worker to avoid having to increase her pay from £4.00 to the national minimum wage rate of £4.92, when she reached the age of 18, as "callous".