Review of recent employment law cases

Employment lawyers are forever vigilant and forever learning to keep up to date with developments in their field.  Here are a scattering of cases that have hit the headlines recently:-

Social media decisions: All of us are aware of the growth of social media sites such as Facebook.

In Preece v JD Wetherspoons Plc, the Tribunal had to consider whether an employee who had used social media whilst at work and made inappropriate comments about two of her customers had been dismissed fairly. The employee had made the Facebook entries whilst at work and her two customers saw them.  It was not relevant that the customers concerned, were said, have abused and threatened the employee and it did not matter that the employee believed she was making comments to an audience limited to her close friends only.   The employee was found to be in breach of the email and internet policy put in place by JD Wetherspoons Plc which specifically referred to the employees’ use of social media while at work.

In Gosden v Lifeline Project Limited, the Sheffield Employment Tribunal found that an employee who had sent a racially and sexually offensive chain email from his home computer to a friend’s home computer was dismissed fairly.  In the circumstances of that case, Mr Gosden who worked for Lifeline sent the email to a friend who worked for a major client of the employer.  The friend forwarded the chain email to colleagues within their workplace so that the email entered the client’s intranet system. The client complained.  Even though the email was sent outside working hours on a private computer to a friend, the decision to dismiss Mr Gosden because of the damage he had caused to his Lifeline’s reputation was found to be a fair reason for dismissal.