Ms A Brown, Counsel For the v Mr P Nainthy, Solicitor. — 2021

The claimant, Mr Pateman, was dismissed on 13 February 2020 after an incident on 10 January 2020 in which he accessed a depositor machine, removed a part, and then reached in to try to fix a loose component. The respondent treated this as gross misconduct. The tribunal accepted that the claimant had initially reached into the machine without isolating it, but found that he then opened the door in the belief that this would isolate the machine; for unknown reasons, the machine indexed and trapped his hand.

The tribunal found that the respondent genuinely believed the claimant had committed gross misconduct, but that the belief was not based on reasonable grounds. The decision-makers relied on material saying the claimant was well trained, yet there was no evidence that he had been trained on safe practices for the particular machine in use. The tribunal found the documentary training record outdated and not machine-specific, and it rejected the respondent's reliance on informal training because no records or direct evidence of that training were produced.

The tribunal also held that the investigation was not reasonable in all respects. Neither Mr Carrey nor Ms Bamber spoke to the claimant's line manager or to his immediate colleagues about whether the method used was accepted practice on the shop floor. Although Ms Bamber obtained information from other managers and asked HR to collate material on consistency, the tribunal found that a reasonable decision-maker should have reviewed that material herself and should have pursued the claimant's point about practice, procedure, and training more directly.

On inconsistency, the tribunal did not accept that the comparator relied on by the claimant was sufficiently similar to show unequal treatment. Even so, because the respondent's belief was not founded on reasonable grounds and the investigation fell short, the dismissal was held to be unfair under section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The tribunal did not decide Polkey reduction or contributory conduct at this stage; those issues were left to the later remedy hearing.