M Sharp (counsel) For the v Respondent — 2024

The claimant resigned on 6 September 2023 after a meeting with Mr Dunderdale about his 5 September 2023 email concerning her approved holiday. The tribunal found that Mr Dunderdale had sent an angry and aggressive email to the directors about the claimant’s absence, knowing she was due to be on leave and having been reminded of that plan at earlier directors’ meetings. In the meeting the next day, the tribunal found that he told her the email was a test of her commitment to the business and that she did not care about the business, which the tribunal held was humiliating and undermining.

The tribunal accepted that earlier matters had occurred, including comments in 2011 about sterilisation and an offensive sexual remark, a 2016 threat to push an employee down the stairs, the rental of unit P1 in 2022, the request in early 2023 that directors lend the company £10,000 each, and the June 2023 redundancy decisions. However, it held that the 2011 comments and the 2016 incident were too remote to form part of a continuing series of events leading to resignation, even though it accepted those events happened. It also gave little weight to the remark about employees working from home being “lazy twats”.

Applying the constructive dismissal authorities, including Western Excavation (ECC) Ltd v Sharp, Malik v Bank of Credit & Commerce International SA, and the last-straw approach in Kaur v Leeds Teaching Hospitals, the tribunal concluded that the relevant cumulative course of conduct consisted of the July 2022 decision to rent unit P1 without explanation, the June 2023 reversal on the agreed 24-hour delay before redundancies, and the 5 September 2023 email about the claimant’s holiday. Taken together with the 6 September 2023 meeting comments, those acts amounted to a repudiatory breach of the implied term of trust and confidence.

The tribunal found that the claimant accepted that breach without delay by resigning verbally at the meeting and confirming it in writing before leaving the premises. It therefore upheld the claim of constructive unfair dismissal. Remedy was not decided in this judgment and was listed for a later hearing.