Mr H Waterman v Atom Supplies Limited — 2024

Mr H Waterman was employed by Atom Supplies Limited from 14 March 2022 to 23 August 2023 as an IT Manager. The respondent gave him three months' notice on 20 June 2023, to expire on 19 September 2023, and later dismissed him for gross misconduct on 23 August 2023 without holding a disciplinary hearing. The live claim at the hearing was for the balance of notice pay.

The tribunal accepted that there was no contractual right to a disciplinary hearing, but held that the respondent still had to prove that the claimant had been in repudiatory breach of contract so as to justify summary dismissal. It found that the respondent had not properly investigated the claimant's explanations about the domain-name issue, including his account of repeated discussions with Mr Petszaft, the spreadsheets he created, and the credit-card and payment difficulties he described. The tribunal held that the claimant's interview answers were not an absolute admission of gross misconduct and did not amount to an admission that he had deleted hundreds of domain names without permission.

The tribunal also found that the decision to dismiss without notice was influenced by matters outside the claimant's conduct, including that he was on paid gardening leave and that holiday pay had been forgiven. Those factors were not relevant to whether he had committed a repudiatory breach. The dismissal without notice was therefore a breach of contract, and the complaint succeeded. The respondent's counterclaim for significant losses was withdrawn and dismissed on withdrawal.

For remedy, the parties agreed that the claimant's losses for 24 August 2023 to 10 September 2023 comprised £2,769.24 gross pay and £101.62 employer pension contributions, totalling £2,870.86. The tribunal rejected the respondent's argument that the claimant's later higher salary should be set off against those losses and awarded the full agreed sum.