Mr Raja Minhas v Sky Retail Stores Limited — 2021

Mr Minhas worked as a Sky Retail Sales Adviser from 15 May 2017 until his dismissal on 4 October 2019. He initially brought claims for unfair dismissal and religion and belief discrimination, but the discrimination claim was withdrawn, leaving unfair dismissal as the only issue for the tribunal. The dismissal arose from a 6 June 2019 conversation at the Sky stand in Blackburn between the claimant and Ms Klemetti about clothing and rape. The exact words were disputed, but the claimant accepted making a remark in the course of a heated private conversation and said that he regretted upsetting a colleague and apologised.

The tribunal found that the investigation and disciplinary process started from an incorrect factual premise. Mr Altaf and later Mr Armstrong initially proceeded on the basis that the comment had been made to two passing girls and that Ms Klemetti was the complainant, when the evidence showed the conversation was private and that Ms Klemetti did not make the complaint. The tribunal accepted that Ms Klemetti was upset by the remark, but it also accepted her evidence that she was happy to continue working with the claimant and did not think dismissal was warranted. It criticised the delay between the June incident and the October dismissal, and found that the wording attributed to the claimant shifted during the process and was never firmly pinned down.

Applying section 98 and section 98(4) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, together with the reasonable employer and band of reasonable responses approach, the tribunal accepted that Mr Armstrong genuinely believed some misconduct had occurred. However, it held that the seriousness of the misconduct had been inflated by a flawed investigation, that there had been no proper consideration of whether a warning would have been sufficient, and that the brand-damage concern was improbable because no member of the public heard the exchange. The appeal did not correct those underlying errors. The tribunal therefore declared the dismissal unfair and listed a separate CVP remedy hearing for 23 April 2021, with compensation issues and any reduction for conduct or the ACAS Code to be considered there.