Hope v British Medical Association (2021)

Within this case, the claimant brought numerous complaints against senior managers. These were concerned with the failure of senior managers to include him in meetings which he thought he should be attending. Management believed that decisions as to who should attend were a matter for them. The complaints could not be resolved at the informal stage as the claimant wanted to discuss his grievances informally with his line manager who had no authority to resolve concerns about more senior managers. However, the claimant refused to progress any of the complaints to the formal stage, instead seeking to retain the ability to do so, and neither did he withdraw the complaints.

A grievance hearing was fixed but the claimant refused to attend. The grievance hearing proceeded, and the grievances were not upheld. The respondent considered the claimant's conduct to amount to gross misconduct in that he had brought numerous vexatious grievances and had refused to comply with a reasonable management instruction to attend the meeting. He was dismissed. The Employment Tribunal found that his dismissal was fair.

However, the claimant appealed. The principal ground of appeal was that the Employment Tribunal had erred in failing to consider whether the conduct relied upon was capable of amounting to gross misconduct in the contractual sense and that the Employment Tribunal’s conclusions were perverse.

The court held that It was held that the Employment Tribunal had not erred in its approach, as a result the appeal was dismissed. The ET used the test under s.98(4) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 involved a consideration of all the circumstances, one of which might include, in some cases, the fact that the conduct relied upon involved a breach of contract amounting to gross misconduct.

However, there was no such contractual element in this case and an analysis on that basis was not required. The ET was entitled to conclude that the employer had acted reasonably in treating the reason for dismissal as being a sufficient reason to dismiss them.