Inadequate investigation

Case 13: The facts

Mr Trybus made a number of complaints about the way his commission was calculated. Several months after his latest complaint, his new line manager wrote to query his whereabouts on a day when it was alleged that he had not been visiting clients as shown in his diary. Trybus told his employer that he wished to raise a formal grievance and requested a meeting, but was suspended for alleged disciplinary issues including improper use of e-mails.

A tribunal found that the employer had wrongly believed Trybus to be planning to resign and take confidential information with him. This had coloured the employer’s whole investigation, which was “utterly flawed– – in particular because clients had not been asked whether Trybus had visited them, and he had not been given the opportunity to put his side of the story in full. The employer had even accused Trybus’s doctor of supplying a false medical certificate because he was a personal friend, an accusation which the tribunal found to be untrue.

The ruling

The Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld the tribunal’s finding that Trybus had been unfairly dismissed. The employer’s failure to contact individual witnesses or to obtain Trybus’s answers to questions rendered its investigation inadequate and the dismissal unfair — all the more so because the employer had been prejudiced against him from the start.

Sovereign Business Integration Plc v Trybus UKEAT/0107/07