Mr Y BENZAHOUANE v Ioet Ltd T/a Tokyoesque — 2022

The claimant, Mr Y Benzahouane, had worked for IOET Ltd t/a Tokyoesque since June 2018 and was promoted to head of operations and finances in July 2020. The tribunal found that his contract did not require him to work permanently in the UK, but it was implied that, as a senior employee of a UK company, he would not work from one country outside the UK for a period that could expose the business to tax or financial risk. It accepted that Ms Meyer did not express concern about him working from France until January 2022, when she became worried after seeing UK post being forwarded there.

The tribunal rejected several pleaded acts as fundamental breaches. It found that Ms Meyer was not monitoring the claimant’s personal devices when she obtained login-location information from Google, there was no attempt to alter the appeal minutes, and removal from the monthly strategy meeting and the appointment of Ms Armstrong as mentor and consultant were not themselves breaches entitling the claimant to resign. It also held that the short notice for the first disciplinary hearing was unreasonable, although that defect was later partly cured by postponement, and that it was reasonable in the circumstances for Ms Meyer to chair the first disciplinary hearing given the small size of the company and the claimant’s seniority.

The decisive breach was the appeal process and what followed on 10 March 2022. The tribunal found that Ms Meyer could not fairly chair the appeal because she had already concluded that she did not trust the claimant and had described him as disingenuous, contradictory and misleading. It held that sending the appeal outcome together with a fresh invitation to a second disciplinary hearing about new allegations, while saying Ms Meyer would chair that hearing and referring to rebuilding trust, was the final straw and, taken with the earlier events, amounted to a breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidence. The claimant resigned on 11 March 2022 in response and did not affirm the contract. The tribunal also recorded that, had the later allegations been heard by an independent third party in a fair process, it was likely the claimant would have been fairly dismissed for misconduct, but remedy was left to a hearing listed for 20 February 2023.