Further misconduct

A. No, but in practice, it is extremely hard to overturn a dismissal triggered by a Final Warning. In particular, there is no rule that the misconduct triggering the dismissal must be of a similar kind to that which produced the original warning. Neither is there any rule that the misconduct triggering the dismissal must be serious.

A tribunal asked to rule on the fairness of a dismissal triggered by a Final Warning will look at all the surrounding circumstances, but it will not re-examine the evidence that led to the Final Warning.

Only if a Final Warning was discriminatory or “manifestly inappropriate” (i.e. an obvious abuse of the employer’s power, for example because it was grossly out of line with the offence committed), is a tribunal likely to rule that the dismissal based on the warning was unfair. This rarely happens.

A tribunal will be even less sympathetic where the employee did not appeal against the Final Warning at the time.