The employment tribunal recently handed down judgment in the case of Ms M Jones v Vale Curtains and Blinds: 3311640/2023, a case that has been picked up and reported widely in the press.
The background to this case is Ms Jones (the Claimant) was employed as a part-time administrator working for Vale Curtains and Blinds (the Respondent). On 14 June 2023, Ms Jones received an e-mail from a customer complaining about an order, this customer was someone Ms Jones had previously felt was rude to her on the phone. The customer wanted to change the time of an upcoming appointment. Ms Jones e-mailed a colleague to change the time and when doing so said ‘Can you change this… he’s a twat so it doesn’t matter if you can’t’. Unfortunately for Ms Jones, instead of forwarding the e-mail to her colleague, she hit ‘reply’ and the e-mail was sent to the customer.
A complaint was made immediately and an immediate apology was made. Ms Jones contacted her supervisor (Mrs Smith) to explain what happened and was told that it was all right and she would deal with it when she returned to the office.
Mrs Smith attempted to resolve the issue with the customer but without satisfaction and Ms Jones even offered to pay £500.00 direct to the customer. During this time the customer threatened to publicise the incident and to leave a poor review on trust pilot.
What happened next was an investigation took place that involved looking at the e-mail Ms Jones sent and deciding this had caused detriment to the company. Neither Ms Jones or the customer were interviewed.
The tribunal was satisfied that what in fact happened, was the customer contacted the company again, made threats about publicising the incident and when Mr Johnson (managing director) learnt of this, told Mrs Smith to get rid of Ms Jones.
Ms Jones was invited to a disciplinary hearing wherein Mrs Smith (her supervisor) informed her she had been told by Mr Johnson to get rid of her. Ms Jones was ultimately dismissed.
In giving judgment, Employment Judge Reindorf KC sitting in reading, set out the law in respect of unfair dismissal relating to conduct in particular the need for a reasonable investigation, belief in the employer’s guilt of misconduct and reasonable grounds for that belief. The tribunal should then decide the reasonableness of the employer’s response, i.e. whether the decision to dismiss falls within the range of reasonable responses [49]. Of note, the investigation must take place before the decision to dismiss is taken (per Robert Whiting Designs v Lamb [1987] ICR 89 EAT).
Employment Judge Reindorf KC conclude the principal reason for dismissal was that the customer had threatened to publicise the email in the press, social media and trust pilot. As such the reason for dismissal was not conduct but accepted it was capable of amounting to some other substantial reason such as to justify the dismissal and therefore potentially fair in accordance with section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 [68-69].
Nevertheless, it was held the Respondent did not act fairly in the circumstances, the actions were outside the range of reasonable responses open to an employer, the disciplinary procedure was a sham and the Respondent had decided to sacrifice Ms Jones for the sake of appeasing the customer and heading off bad reviews and wholly unreasonably failed to consider more proportionate ways of achieving the same outcome [70].
There was no Polkey reduction but the tribunal accepted Ms Jones contributed 10% towards her dismissal [75]. Ms Jones was awarded £521.54 for the basic award and £5,514.67 for the compensatory award, then reduced by 10%.
