The reason given for dismissal. Does it matter?

In this case the employee was a financial controller. One of his responsibilities was to monitor the company’s bank accounts. The company fell victim to a fraud in which approximately €1.7m were lost from one of its bank accounts over the course of a couple of months. However, the employee did not detect or report the fraudulent transactions until after significant sums had been lost.

The company took the view that he was grossly negligent in failing to spot the fraudulent transactions and summarily dismissed him. In the dismissal letter the company cited ‘misconduct’ as the reason for his dismissal.

The employee brought a claim for unfair dismissal and in responding to his claim, the company cited ‘capability’ as the reason for his dismissal.

The Employment Tribunal found that the dismissal was due to both capability and conduct but that conduct was the primary reason for dismissal. It took the view that there had been serious negligence on the part of the employee and accordingly held that the dismissal was fair.

The employee appealed arguing that the Employment Tribunal should not have found that the dismissal was fair on the basis of ‘misconduct’ since the company had asserted in its answer to the claim that the reason for dismissal was ‘capability’. However, the Employment Appeals Tribunal took the view that the change of label was not of any significance since the decision to dismiss had at all times been based upon the same set of facts.

The Employment Appeals Tribunal said that since the change of label caused no prejudice to the employee the Employment Tribunal was not prevented from dealing with the claim on the basis of misconduct. Accordingly the appeal was dismissed.