Mr G Young v Source Personnel Limited — 2019

The claimant, Mr G Young, was summarily dismissed on 1 March 2019 after refusing a direction to attend work on 28 February 2019. He said he had sought to use a duvet day in order to attend an interview, and the tribunal found that the respondent's duvet day policy had generally been applied in an employee-friendly and cooperative way, with a reasonable expectation that requests would be allowed unless there was a good business reason not to do so.

The tribunal accepted that the claimant disobeyed a clear instruction to attend work, but it did not accept that the circumstances amounted to repudiatory breach of contract. Applying the principle in Laws v Chronicle (Indicator Newspapers) Ltd, the tribunal considered the claimant's prior good record, the lack of any clear operational explanation for refusing the duvet day, the absence of evidence of adverse impact on the business, and the fact that he had not been warned that dismissal could follow. It found that, on the conversation as a whole, he understood the immediate consequence would be that he would not be paid for the day, not that he faced summary dismissal.

The tribunal therefore held that the respondent was entitled to dismiss for breach of contract in principle, but the breach was not sufficiently serious in context to justify summary dismissal. The claimant's wrongful dismissal claim succeeded.

On remedy, the tribunal awarded four weeks' notice pay under the contract. Using an annual salary of £28,000, it calculated the notice payment at £538.46 per week and awarded £2,153.84. It declined to award the additional £25 mobile phone allowance and £22.77 interest because those sums were not pleaded or evidenced before the tribunal.