Range of reasonable responses

Case 9: The facts

Mary Ogunlana was dismissed after an incident involving an altercation with a colleague, who was also dismissed. A tribunal found that her employer had wrongly interpreted the incident as an "argument" when in fact some of the evidence gathered during its investigation was that Ogunlana had remained calm in the face of a colleague who was being aggressive towards her. It found that the employer was wrong to treat both employees in the same way and that Ogunlana had been unfairly dismissed.

The ruling

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) said the tribunal was wrong to come to its own conclusions about the evidence. A tribunal must decide whether an employer has acted within the range of reasonable responses in dismissing an employee, having carried out a reasonable investigation. This was a classic case, the EAT said, of a tribunal substituting its views of what the employer should have done instead of looking objectively at whether the employer's actions were reasonable.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital NHS Trust v Ogunlana EAT/0372/06