Miss D Drofti v Deli Solutions Limited — 2021

Miss D Drofti was employed by Deli Solutions Limited as a Quality Assurance Supervisor and was dismissed on 23 October 2019 after an investigation into an email she sent from her work account to her personal account on 10 October 2019. The email contained two photographs, a training certificate and a witness statement. The Tribunal found that the claimant had been trained on the respondent's data protection obligations, knew she was breaching them, and that the dismissal was for conduct. It also found that the grievance and disciplinary processes, including the hearing before Jasmaine Thomas and the appeal to Donato Ventricelli, were carried out fairly and within the range of reasonable responses.

The claimant relied on an email sent on 4 October 2019 as a protected disclosure. The Tribunal held that it was not a qualifying disclosure under the Employment Rights Act 1996 because it was about matters affecting the claimant personally, was not made in the public interest, did not reasonably tend to show a failure to comply with a relevant legal obligation in the whistleblowing sense, and did not amount to disclosure of racial harassment. The automatic unfair dismissal claim therefore failed.

On ordinary unfair dismissal, the Tribunal accepted that the respondent genuinely believed the claimant had committed misconduct in sending the documents to her personal email and that the investigation by Chris Walsh was reasonable. The Tribunal also rejected the claimant's comparisons with the bribery incident, the almond cake incident and Aleksandra Glinka's photobook because they were not truly parallel circumstances and did not show inconsistency or race discrimination. On wrongful dismissal, the Tribunal found the claimant's conduct amounted to gross misconduct, so dismissal without notice was not in breach of contract.

The race harassment and direct race discrimination claims also failed. The Tribunal found that Daniel Adams's comments about the claimant's nails and the instruction about phone use were management actions linked to hygiene, work practice and the respondent's policies, not to race. It further found that the claimant's proposed comparators, including Szymon Golubek and Aleksandra Glinka, were not comparable in the relevant respects. All claims were dismissed and no remedy was awarded.