Sending pornographic emails 5 years ago was gross misconduct

In Williams v Leeds United Football Club, the High Court has held that an employer was entitled to summarily dismiss an employee, who was already serving 12 months’ notice of redundancy, when it discovered that, five years previously, he had forwarded a pornographic e-mail to a junior colleague and two external contacts. The employer was entitled to treat this conduct as a repudiation of the contract of employment, despite the fact that it was looking for a reason to justify immediate termination.

 

 

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Linking bonus entitlement to sickness record was disability discrimination

 

In Land Registry v Houghton and ors, the EAT has upheld a tribunal’s decision that a bonus scheme that excluded those who had received a formal warning in respect of sickness absence during the relevant financial year occasioned discrimination arising from disability under S.15 of the Equality Act 2010. The rule clearly gave rise to unfavourable treatment in consequence of disability, given that the exclusion was automatic even for disability-related absences, and it could not be objectively justified because, among other things, managers had no discretion under the scheme.

http://www.employmentappeals.gov.uk/Public/Upload/14_0149rjfhATBA.doc

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