Mr Gary Ferguson v Royal Mail Group Limited — 2022

The claimant, a Delivery Officer, was summarily dismissed after incidents involving his line manager on 8 and 10 May 2021. The respondent relied on conduct as the potentially fair reason, including allegations that the claimant acted aggressively, refused an instruction to go to the canteen, swore at the line manager, was dishonest about the 8 May incident, and deliberately tried to mislead the investigation to get the line manager disciplined.

The Tribunal found that the respondent had an honest and genuine belief in misconduct, and that it was reasonable to sustain beliefs on some of the lower-level misconduct allegations. However, it found that no reasonable employer could have sustained the gross misconduct allegations of dishonesty and misleading the investigation. The Tribunal considered that the line manager had admitted touching the claimant during a heated argument, in circumstances where social distancing regulations applied, and that the claimant had consistently complained about unwanted contact.

The Tribunal also found the investigation was not reasonable. It identified shortcomings including reliance on witnesses suggested by the line manager, anonymous statements without explanation, lack of scrutiny of inconsistent statements, no investigation report, the same manager conducting an initial discussion and then the disciplinary decision, undocumented discussions at appeal stage, failure to investigate the prior grievance against the line manager properly, and failure to consider adequately the admitted breach of social distancing regulations. Since the respondent accepted that the claimant would not have been dismissed but for the gross misconduct allegations, the dismissal was unfair. The Tribunal found there was no chance the claimant would have been fairly dismissed had a fair procedure been followed, while leaving contributory fault to remedy.