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28th February 2008

NEWS IN BRIEF

Don't Expire

The Court of Appeal has overturned the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Airbus v Webb, with the result that employers can take expired warnings into account in disciplinaries.

Mr Webb was summarily dismissed for gross misconduct, but reinstated on appeal and given a final 12-month written warning. Three weeks after the warning expired he was found watching television with four other employees when he should have been working.

Although all the men were disciplined, Mr Webb was the only one to be dismissed. He said that was unfair because his employer had obviously taken his expired warning into account when coming to their decision.

The Court of Appeal, however, said that tribunals were not required by previous case law to hold that “a previous spent warning should be ignored for all purposes.” An expired warning was simply one factor to be taken into account in deciding whether the employer had acted reasonably or not.

In this case, the company had shown that the reason for dismissal was the later misconduct and not the expired final warning and was therefore fair. However, the court warned that employers should not rely on expired warnings “as a matter of course”.

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