E-mail a red card for Employee

A recent High Court ruling highlights the importance of never misusing IT facilities at work.

The case shows how a single mistake — for example, sending confidential information to a non-work email account — can come back and haunt you, years later.

Mr Williams had worked for seven years in a senior position at Leeds United Football Club when in 2013, the club launched a restructuring, deleting his post. After two consultation meetings, he received notice of dismissal on grounds of redundancy. His contract gave him 12 months’ notice, but the club had decided not to honour this. It set about paying forensic investigators to trawl through Williams’ computer records for evidence of gross misconduct.

They discovered gold, in the form of one pornographic email sent to Williams five years earlier, which he had forwarded to two outside individuals and to a female receptionist at the club.

After being dismissed summarily for gross misconduct, Williams issued a wrongful dismissal claim for his notice pay, but the court ruled against him.

Forwarding the pornographic email was an act of gross misconduct, said the court. The law allowed the club to end the contract summarily. It made no difference that the information was only discovered after the club decided to end the employment for redundancy, and only in a deliberate search of past records for evidence to enable them to avoid notice pay obligations.

Williams v Leeds United Football Club [2015] EWHC 376 (QB)

www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2015/376.html