Misconducting investigation into misconduct

J Sainsbury Ltd v Hitt (CA TLR 14 November)

The EAT had applied an incorrect legal test in deciding whether an employee had been correctly dismissed in that it had substituted its own opinion instead of applying the objective standard of a reasonable employer. The range of reasonable responses test applied as much to whether the investigation was reasonable in all the circumstances as it did to whether the decision to dismiss was reasonable. In the present case if the correct approach had been taken, the only conclusion that a reasonable tribunal would have come to was that the investigation into the employee’s alleged misconduct was reasonable in all the circumstances, so the decision to dismiss the employee was reasonable.