Ms G Churchhouse (Counsel) For the v Respondent — 2021

The claimant's age discrimination claim had been withdrawn and dismissed at an earlier case management hearing. The remaining substantive claims concerned unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal, and a complaint that he was not allowed to be accompanied at the 9 July 2020 meeting when the dismissal decision was communicated. He had been dismissed summarily for gross misconduct after allegations arising from a 22 June 2020 Zoom call with Employee X and from prior Instagram communications.

On unfair dismissal, the tribunal accepted that the respondent genuinely believed the claimant had committed misconduct, had reasonable grounds for that belief, and conducted a reasonable investigation. It relied on Employee X's complaint, the immediate text messages she sent to Laura Gosney, the Instagram exchanges, and the appeal manager's detailed rehearing of the case. The disciplinary stage was found to be procedurally defective because the same manager investigated and heard the case, and the claimant had limited opportunity to see interview material before the decision, but the appeal process was held to have cured those defects. The unfair dismissal claim was therefore dismissed.

The wrongful dismissal claim succeeded because, although the tribunal accepted the respondent's process and the reasonableness of its belief for unfair dismissal purposes, it could not itself make a finding on the alleged Zoom-call conduct on the evidence before it. The tribunal also upheld the accompanying complaint, finding that the 9 July 2020 meeting was sufficiently broad to engage the statutory right to be accompanied and that the respondent's failure to answer the claimant's request was unreasonable. Remedy was left to agreement, with the judgment recording three months' pay for wrongful dismissal and two weeks' pay, subject to the statutory cap, for the accompaniment claim.