Mr S Sealey v TJ Smith & Nephew Limited — 2019

The claimant, Mr S Sealey, resigned on 23 January 2018 after being suspended pending an investigation into customer complaints, including allegations described by the tribunal as concerns about dishonesty and lack of support. The tribunal accepted that Mr Maloney had received feedback from customers at Hereford County Hospital and Spire Cardiff and that those complaints were serious enough to justify taking advice from HR and moving to a formal disciplinary route. It also found that the claimant’s complaint about a bonus of £2,500 was not a separate claim but part of the losses he said flowed from the alleged constructive dismissal.

The tribunal rejected the claimant’s case that Mr Maloney had deliberately excluded him from information or was running a plan to push him out. It found that the missed mini lab was an oversight rather than intentional side-lining, and that the Genmed contract information was not deliberately withheld and was not a substantial change to the claimant’s working conditions. It also found that Mr Maloney’s decision to meet the customers without the claimant, to investigate the allegations, and to continue with a disciplinary-style process was not unreasonable in the circumstances, given the nature of the complaints and the need to establish the facts.

On the suspension and the investigation meeting, the tribunal found that there was no objective basis for treating the suspension as a disciplinary sanction or for concluding that the investigation was conducted in an aggressive or improper way. It accepted that the claimant was distressed by the process, but held that the restrictions on contact with customers and colleagues, and the ongoing investigation after the meeting, were not repudiatory breaches of contract. Applying the constructive dismissal authorities it had set out, including the implied term of trust and confidence and the last straw doctrine, the tribunal found that none of the matters relied upon by the claimant amounted individually or cumulatively to a breach of contract. The claim was therefore dismissed.