The emergency remedy for specified automatically unfair dismissals, with its seven-day time limit which cannot be extended. Taplin v C Shippam Ltd; Ministry of Justice v Sarfraz.
Interim Relief; test; the claimant must show a 'pretty good chance' of success.
Effective date of termination; summary dismissal in breach of contract. A summary dismissal fixes the statutory EDT at the date of communication even where the contract required notice: the dismissal may be wrongful, but the employee cannot keep the contract alive for statutory-EDT purposes by declining to accept the repudiation. The EDT is a statutory construct serving the certainty of tribunal time limits, decoupled from the contractual validity of the termination. The answer, at statutory level, to any argument that a contractual requirement of written notice prevents an oral dismissal from starting the clock. Endorsed post-Geys by the CA in Rabess v London Fire (2016) and the EAT in Meaker v Cyxtera (2023): the elective theory does not disturb it.
Interim Relief; whistleblowing; the claimant must show a 'pretty good chance' of success to get an order.
Unfair dismissal; EDT; the effective date of termination is when the employee *reads* the letter, not when it was posted.
Interim relief; ss.128-129 ERA 1996; meaning of 'likely'. To order interim relief in a s.103A dismissal case the judge must find it 'likely' — a significantly higher degree of likelihood than the balance of probabilities, something nearer to certainty (Taplin v C Shippam Ltd [1978] ICR 1068 considered) — that the tribunal will find each element: a qualifying disclosure was made, the claimant believed it tended to show a relevant failure, that belief was reasonable, the disclosure was made in good faith, and it was the principal reason for dismissal. The order was overturned because the judge failed to consider the reasonableness of the claimant's belief, which was not likely to be established.
Interim relief; s.161 TULRCA; on an application for interim relief following dismissal for trade union activities, the tribunal makes a summary assessment of whether the claim has a 'pretty good chance' of success on the material before it; the interim relief order continues the employee's remuneration pending determination, with the statutory regime providing for variation or discharge if circumstances change.
Effective date of termination; summary dismissal; effect of Geys. Firefighter summarily dismissed for gross misconduct; an internal appeal months later downgraded the finding to misconduct and paid six weeks' notice pay; he argued the EDT moved to the end of that notional notice period, or (post-Geys) to when he accepted the repudiation. CA (Laws LJ): the EDT is a question of fact; it did not shift by reason of anything on the internal appeal; Gisda Cyf is 'wholly consonant' with Robert Cort, which leaves s.97 as an autonomous statutory question 'unchallenged by the conventional or general principles of law of contract'; Geys was 'wholly concerned' with common-law contractual questions and does not bear on the statutory EDT. The CA-level resolution of the Geys/Robert Cort tension, applied by the EAT in Meaker v Cyxtera. NB the CA's reasoning was anchored in the employee's understanding ('could only have understood' he was dismissed on the earlier date) and the absence of unjust disadvantage - both potentially distinguishable where the employer's own formal documents pointed the employee to a later date.
Dismissal; communication; objective test. Whether an employer has terminated the contract is tested objectively: how would the employer's conduct or words be understood by the objective observer, given what was known to the employee and the relevant circumstances? Dismissal must be communicated, whether by words or conduct, but the communication need not be express; it may be implied (failure to pay, issuing a P45), provided it is something of which the employee was aware. Applied in Cosmeceuticals v Parkin, where the EAT asked whether the employer had communicated an 'unequivocal' intention to terminate 'in circumstances where there were no other contraindications' - the framework under which an employer's surrounding formal documents (notice, payroll, P45) bear on whether an unequivocal summary dismissal was communicated at all.
Effective date of termination; summary dismissal; s.97(1)(b) ERA 1996. A managing director was told orally on 1 September that her contract was at an end; the employer then purported to place her on garden leave and served notice expiring 23 October, its own later documents pointing to the October date. The EAT held the EDT was 1 September: an unambiguous oral communication that the contract is being brought to an end is a summary dismissal, and notice purportedly given after a summary dismissal does not move the EDT to the end of the notice period. The employer's subsequent paperwork cannot rewrite the legal event. Critical for interim relief, where s.128(2) allows seven days from the EDT with no power to extend: count from the meeting, not the letter.