The claimant made claims for unfair dismissal and unlawful disability discrimination. The background facts are that a female colleague made allegations that a number of male colleagues sexually assaulted her and that the claimant had sent her abusive text and Facebook messages. The claimant was suspended from work and an investigatory meeting was arranged.

Errors were made in the wording of the allegations against the claimant which referred to sexual harassment and that the alleged conduct occurred over a period of 6 months; neither of which were entirely accurate. A disciplinary hearing was then adjourned to allow more evidence to be gathered and when it was eventually reconvened the claimant was not in attendance.

The manager dealing with the hearing then decided to summarily dismiss the claimant for gross misconduct in his absence. A new manager then inherited the disciplinary proceedings and saw fit to make his own findings but again erroneously made reference to the sexual harassment allegations which, it had already been accepted, were not connected to the claimant. The tribunal noted that the new manager ignored the claimant’s representations that he was actually away from the workplace on alleged dates. Nonetheless, on the facts, summary dismissal was held to be within the limits of the range of reasonable responses.

Practical Lessons

The recurring, yet completely avoidable, complication for the employer here was that it kept getting the allegations against the claimant mixed up with allegations against other colleagues. This was obvious from the original suspension letter which contained incorrect allegations and incorrect dates.

This issue was eventually ironed out but the appointment of a new manager to take over the process saw a return to the confusion. The serious consequence of this was that the tribunal held that the claimant understandably formed an impression that the allegations against him had been linked to those of his colleagues against whom more serious allegations had been made and that his case had been “prejudged”.  The handover of such information between managers in these situations is clearly absolutely key and ensuring that there is a continuity of treatment of the employee is part of that. Otherwise, as here, this can give rise to potential unfairness in the disciplinary process.