Ms A Lewington-Hill v Chase Search and Selection Limited — 2020

Ms A Lewington-Hill was employed by Chase Search and Selection and assigned to GSK to promote Trelegy Ellipta. The tribunal found that GSK pressed her to promote the product outside its licence, relying in particular on the 11 April 2018 email from Mr De Almeida and the unchallenged evidence of Ms Halsall. It also found that when she resigned on 31 August 2018 her resignation letter did not mention licence issues.

On the protected disclosure detriment complaints, the tribunal held that the relevant act was the imposition of the performance focus plan on 16/17 July 2018. On that basis the three-month time limit had expired before ACAS early conciliation and the ET1, and the tribunal held it was reasonably practicable for the claims to have been presented in time. The detriment claims were therefore dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The tribunal did not finally decide whether the conversations with GSK amounted to protected disclosures.

On the constructive unfair dismissal claim, the tribunal accepted that the claimant had been under pressure from GSK to promote Trelegy outside the licence, but found that she did not tell Peter Munro of Chase that this was happening. It found that Chase did not itself require her to act outside the licence, that Munro tried to help her move away from the GSK project, and that the performance plan only warned that GSK might no longer require her services on that project. Applying Western Excavation v Sharp and Woods v WM Car Services, the tribunal held there was no fundamental breach of the implied term of trust and confidence by the respondent, so the unfair dismissal claim was dismissed.