- IN PERSON FOR THE v Respondent — 2021

The claimant, Mr Williamson, was employed by Demontfort Fine Art Ltd as a Gallery Manager and was dismissed in September 2019 after the respondent investigated a website launched on 23 July 2019 in the name Fine Art Investor. The respondent’s case was that the site and related material suggested a partnership with Whitewall Galleries, Clarendon Fine Art and DeMontfort Fine Art when no such permission had been given, and that the claimant had created and operated the site for his own venture. The claimant said the website and associated wording were approved or suggested within work meetings and that his dismissal followed a disputed performance improvement process.

Employment Judge Cadney found that the claimant did not advance, during the internal investigation, disciplinary or appeal process, the version of events he later gave at tribunal that Siobhan Taylor had authorised the website wording or that he had permission to present the respondent as in partnership with FAI. The tribunal preferred the evidence of Mr Sherwin, Mr Mountford and Ms Ball, and found it improbable that such an important defence would have been omitted from the contemporaneous notes and the appeal letter if it had been raised. The judge was also sceptical about the claimant’s account of a final PIP document and about the provenance of the later-supplied "about me" page.

Applying the Burchell questions and the range of reasonable responses test, the tribunal held that the respondent had a potentially fair reason for dismissal and that the investigation was reasonable. It was entitled to rely on the website’s false representations, the absence of permission for the disputed wording, and the fact that the claimant had used a social media platform to make those representations while employed by the respondent. Although the judge accepted that the contract-breach findings were not supported by specific factual findings for each clause, that did not undermine the central conclusion that the claimant had set up and launched a website containing false representations in competition with the respondent.

The tribunal therefore found that dismissal was within the range of reasonable responses and dismissed the unfair dismissal claim. No monetary award was made.