Unfair 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 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.
HR and legal information and guidance relating to unfair dismissal.