Mr Sharpe v Sepco International Limited — 2023

The tribunal held that Mr Sharpe did not resign on 20 December 2022. It accepted that he was angry and upset during the exchange about his afternoon route, and found that any words or conduct suggesting resignation were spoken in the heat of the moment. The tribunal applied Kwik-Fit v Lineham and found there were special circumstances, so it was not reasonable for Sepco International Limited to treat the matter as a clear resignation. Mr Sharpe was therefore dismissed.

On the reason for dismissal, the tribunal found that Mr Lavasani held a genuine belief that Mr Sharpe had committed the conduct alleged and that this belief was based on the incident reports from Mr Brown, Mr Garbutt and Mr Kassim. It accepted that the dismissal was for conduct and that Mr Lavasani acted within the band of reasonable responses in treating that conduct as capable of justifying dismissal. However, the tribunal found the dismissal procedure was not fair.

The tribunal's procedural findings were that Sepco did not invite Mr Sharpe to a formal disciplinary hearing, did not provide him in advance with the incident reports on which dismissal was based, and did not allow him a fair opportunity to answer the case before dismissal. The appeal hearing did not cure those defects because Mr Lavasani only read selected excerpts of the reports to Mr Sharpe during the appeal, rather than giving him the evidence in advance. The tribunal found this was not compliant with the ACAS Code and was outside the band of reasonable responses.

On remedy-related issues, the tribunal made provisional findings only. It assessed Polkey at 80% in the sense that it considered there was an 80% chance Mr Sharpe would still have been dismissed even if a fair procedure had been followed. It also found contributory conduct and said it would be just to reduce any basic and compensatory award by 75%, but no final monetary award was determined because a separate remedy hearing was to be listed if the parties could not agree settlement.