Ms T O’Halloran, counsel For the v Respondent — 2024

Mr Timothy Jeffries worked for Apple Retail UK Limited from 18 December 2010 until his dismissal on 3 February 2023. He had a clean disciplinary record. At the hearing, his automatic unfair dismissal claim under section 152 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 was withdrawn, and the remaining ordinary unfair dismissal claim was determined on the merits.

On the first allegation, the tribunal accepted that Mr Jeffries made an inappropriate comment on 13 December 2022 to Ran Liu about "another deadly disease on the world." It found, however, that the remark was not bullying or harassment on the evidence before Apple because it was a one-off comment in a workplace culture where banter and joking were present, Ms Liu was not offended, and the other people who heard it were not personally offended. The tribunal also found that Apple did not have a written "zero tolerance" policy of the kind relied on by the dismissing manager, and that no proper policy breach had been identified.

On the second allegation, the tribunal found that the investigation and disciplinary process confused two different dates, 16 and 17 December 2022. Mr Jeffries was not properly told what the allegation was, was not given Mr Marsh's email when the matter was investigated, and was questioned about events that were not the subject of the complaint. The tribunal accepted that he had repeated a colleague's account that raised the possibility of positive discrimination, and held that Mr Pegram failed to engage with whether that was a protected act or with the correct legal distinction between harassment, discrimination, and victimisation.

Applying section 98(4) ERA 1996, the Burchell approach, and the band of reasonable responses test, the tribunal held that the investigation, the disciplinary decision, and the appeal were not open to a reasonable employer. The appeal did not cure the defects in the original process. The tribunal therefore found the dismissal unfair. No remedy figure was recorded in the judgment.