The Court of Appeal has held that, when considering dismissal of an employee for misconduct, an employer is not taken to have known mitigating facts that are known to the employee's manager but are withheld from the dismissing officer.
The Court of Appeal has reinstated an employment tribunal decision that a nurse with a clean record was unfairly dismissed when she made a single lewd remark while restraining a patient having an epileptic fit.
In Gisda Cyf v Barratt [2010] IRLR 1073 SC, the Supreme Court held that, where a dismissal is effected by letter, the effective date of termination (from which the time limit for an unfair dismissal claim begins to run) does not occur until the letter is read or until the point at which the employee has had a reasonable opportunity to read it. In doing so, the Court rejected the contention that ordinary contractual principles should apply so that the effective date of termination would be the date on which the letter is delivered.