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Scottish Court of Session Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> Scottish Court of Session Decisions >> McCormack v Hamilton Academicals Football Club [2011] ScotCS CSIH_68 (15 November 2011) URL: http://www.bailii.org/scot/cases/ScotCS/2011/2011CSIH68.html Cite as: [2011] CSIH 68, [2011] ScotCS CSIH_68, 2011 GWD 39-801, [2012] IRLR 108 |
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EXTRA DIVISION, INNER HOUSE, COURT OF SESSION
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Lord EassieLord Mackay of DrumadoonLord Emslie
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[2011] CSIH 68A902/08
OPINION OF THE COURT
delivered by LORD EMSLIE
in causa
by
JOHN DUFFY McCORMACK
Pursuer & Respondent;
against
HAMILTON ACADEMICAL FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED
Defenders & Reclaimers:
_______
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Alt: Upton; Blacklocks
15 November 2011
The Issue for Determination
[1] On
Monday 1 September
2008, the
pursuer was summarily dismissed from his position as assistant manager of
Hamilton Academical Football Club. In this action he alleges wrongful
dismissal and claims damages from the defenders in that connection. According
to him, the defenders initially contracted to employ him for a two-year period
with effect from 30 June 2008, and as a result of their breach of contract in dismissing
him barely two months later he lost significant amounts of salary and bonuses.
It is now a matter of agreement that any award of damages should be in the sum
of £31,251.44.
[2] The defenders, by contrast, maintain that
the pursuer was engaged as assistant manager for one season only and, more
importantly, that they were fully justified in dismissing him for gross
misconduct. In particular they point to (1) unacceptable conduct and foul
language at an under-19 tournament in Oban in July 2008;
(2) dressing-room incidents, again at Oban in July, involving offensive
and embarrassing conduct and remarks towards a young female physiotherapist;
(3) disruptive behaviour, in the nature of a prank, while an invited
dietician and nutritionist was giving a talk on 17 August;
(4) alleged bullying of certain young players in training; and finally (5) "the
last straw", in the form of a drunken and abusive tirade over the telephone
towards a new foreign signing on 31 August.
[3] After proof the Lord Ordinary held that all
bar the fourth of these complaints against the pursuer had been made out, but
that in the whole circumstances (as discussed at paras 79-91 of his
opinion) they did not, individually or in combination, entitle the defenders to
the remedy of summary dismissal on 1 September. The pursuer's dismissal
had to be seen in context. Having received informal warnings from the club
chairman as to his future conduct following the Oban incidents, the pursuer had
apologised all round and conduct of that character was never repeated. Heated
arguments with the manager and others after the nutritionist's talk in mid-August
apparently led to an elevation of the pursuer's status within the club rather
than any disciplinary response. Between the Oban tournament and the date of
dismissal no-one expressed concerns to the pursuer about his coaching style
with young players, nor was any relevant complaint recorded. There appeared to
be no problem regarding the discharge of the pursuer's primary responsibilities
as a first team coach. His conduct was at no time the subject of any internal
inquiry or discussion at board level. No written or formal verbal conduct
warning was ever issued. And the Lord Ordinary's impression was that the most
recent difficulty with the young foreign player did not figure largely in the
reasons given at the dismissal meeting. Taking all these factors into account,
the Lord Ordinary's conclusion was in inter alia the following
terms:
"[92] The obligation of confidence and trust is a mutual one. In my view, Hamilton itself was under a duty to keep the employee fully informed of any perceived deficiencies in his or her (sic) conduct during the course of a contract of employment. That did not occur here.
[93] In my view all the incidents, taken together, did not justify summary dismissal. Mr McCormack's conduct did not in my view justify that step being taken. It was not such as to demonstrate that he was repudiating the contract. Accordingly, I hold that he was wrongfully dismissed."
[4] The short question arising in this
reclaiming motion is whether, as the defenders and reclaimers maintain, the
Lord Ordinary erred in upholding the pursuer's claim of wrongful dismissal.
"No reasonable judge", it is said, "... could have concluded that by the date of
the dismissal the continuance of the pursuer's contract of employment was
possible", or that the central obligations of mutual trust and confidence
between employer and employee still remained intact. On a proper assessment of
the evidence, the pursuer was lawfully dismissed for gross misconduct and the
defenders should have been assoilzied. The defenders' complaint is thus not of
any error of law as such, but of a seriously flawed assessment of the evidence
leading to an untenable conclusion.
[5] In that regard, counsel for the defenders
sought to persuade us that the various incidents leading to dismissal should
properly be seen as a consistent course of misconduct, the common theme being
the pursuer's repeated failure "... to behave himself in the civil and
professional manner which behoved his senior position with the club".
Furthermore, the Lord Ordinary had accepted evidence showing that, by
mid-August, the pursuer was well aware that he "... had to mind his Ps and Qs and
keep his head down for three months in order to get a contract with the club".
This referred back to one of his meetings with the club chairman following the
Oban incidents, during which the chairman had declined to issue the pursuer
with a written contract. There was also the important consideration that the
affairs of a football club were very much in the public eye, and that misconduct
by senior officials could do serious damage to the club's reputation and
standing in the community. Taking these factors together, it was said, any
reasonable Lord Ordinary would have held the pursuer to have been lawfully
dismissed. Where the Lord Ordinary had erred was in (a) according
inadequate weight to these critical factors, and at the same time
(b) giving excessive weight to factors which, in comparison, were either
irrelevant or of low materiality. A lack of disciplinary records, for example,
was of little significance where the pursuer was plainly aware that his
position was precarious, and the same applied to any failure to keep him
informed as to perceived deficiencies in his conduct. By reference to the
helpful summary in Macphail, Sheriff Court Practice, 3rd
ed., at para 18.104, counsel acknowledged that there was only limited
scope for an appellate court to interfere with decisions of fact and degree
reached by a judge after hearing evidence. In this case, however, it could be
said with confidence that the Lord Ordinary had gone plainly wrong, and
that his decision could not stand.
[6] In supporting the Lord Ordinary's
reasoning and conclusions, counsel for the pursuer emphasised the limited scope
for appellate review in cases of this kind. Reference was made in that context
to several well-known cases, notably Thomas v Thomas 1947 SC
(HL) 45 and Biogen Inc v Medeva PLC [1997] RPC 1.
Against that background, the Lord Ordinary was well entitled to decide the
case as he did. He had not misdirected himself in law, nor had he taken
account of irrelevant matters or left material considerations out of account,
and the relative weight to be accorded to the various competing factors was
entirely a matter for his judgment. However serious the pursuer's initial
misconduct in Oban may have been, it was clear that the defenders had not
treated that as meriting dismissal at the time. On the contrary, the contract
of employment had thereafter been allowed to run on for many weeks. Importantly,
the incidents in August were much less serious, and at the same time different
in character from what had gone before. Even the defenders acknowledged that
none of these incidents would, if taken in isolation, have warranted summary
dismissal. In the whole circumstances, that exceptional remedy was simply not
available to the defenders on 1 September, and there was no legitimate
basis on which the Lord Ordinary's conclusion to that effect could be
impugned.
Discussion
[7] The
general law regarding summary dismissal is not in doubt. As recorded by the
Lord Ordinary at paras 71-74 of his opinion, that remedy is warranted only
where an employee's conduct amounts to "... a repudiation of the fundamental
terms of the contract" and "... makes the continuance of the contract of service
impossible": Pepper v Webb [1969] 1 WLR 514, per
Harman LJ at 517; Wilson v Racher [1974] ICR 428, per Edmund Davies LJ at 432. There is no fixed rule as
to the degree of misconduct required to undermine the mutual trust and confidence
on which the whole contract of employment hinges, and this accordingly raises a
classic "jury question" in the particular circumstances of a given case: Clouston
& Co Ltd v Corry [1906] AC 122; cf Malik v BCCI [1998] AC 20.
[8] On the authorities, however, summary
dismissal has to be regarded as an exceptional remedy calling for substantial
justification. It will not readily be sustained for misconduct which only
peripherally affects the performance of core duties under the relevant employment
contract. To bring summary dismissal into play, repudiatory conduct must be so
serious as to strike at the foundation of the employer/employee relationship,
and for practical purposes to make its continuance impossible. It is,
furthermore, a remedy which must normally be exercised as soon as a
sufficiently serious episode or course of misconduct comes to the employer's
attention. Delay and inaction at that point carry with them an obvious risk
that the employer will be held to have passed from his option to accept the
repudiation and, conditionally or otherwise, to have affirmed the contract
instead. Alternatively, the passage of time without effective action may serve
to negate any genuine causal link between misconduct and dismissal. Either
way, in our view, summary dismissal having the appearance of an afterthought
will stand little chance of being upheld.
[9] There is also no dispute as to the extent
to which an appellate court is legitimately entitled to review decisions of
fact which have been reached by a judge after hearing evidence. The advantage
of seeing and hearing witnesses should not be underestimated, and an appellate
court should in general respect conclusions of fact and degree unless it is
clear that in some way the judge has gone plainly wrong. In Thomas v Thomas,
after referring to "... all the incidental elements so difficult to describe
which make up the atmosphere of an actual trial", Lord Macmillan (at p.59)
said:
"This assistance the trial Judge possessed in reaching his conclusion, but it is not available to the appellate Court. So far as the case stands on paper it not infrequently happens that a decision either way may seem equally open. When this is so, ..., then the decision of the trial Judge, who has enjoyed the advantages not available to the appellate Court, becomes of paramount importance and ought not to be disturbed. This is not an abrogation of the powers of a Court of appeal on question of fact. The judgment of the trial Judge on the facts may be demonstrated ... to be affected by material inconsistencies and inaccuracies, or he may be shown to have failed to appreciate the weight or bearing of circumstances admitted or proved, or otherwise to have gone plainly wrong."
Along similar lines, in the Biogen case, Lord Hoffman (at p.45) affirmed the need for appellate restraint in relation to all judgments of degree having a factual basis. As he put it:
"Where the application of a legal standard such as negligence or obviousness involves no question of principle but is simply a matter of degree, an appellate court should be very cautious in differing from the judge's evaluation".
[10] With these important considerations in mind,
we are not persuaded that the Lord Ordinary's conclusions on the "jury
question" before him should be disturbed. On one view, and at best for the
defenders and reclaimers, this is a classic situation of the type considered in
Thomas, Biogen and similar cases. There was evidence which, in
the Lord Ordinary's view, clearly established a number of separate and
individually different acts of misconduct on the pursuer's part. The relative
seriousness of these intermittent episodes was a matter for the
Lord Ordinary to assess and weigh up in the whole circumstances of the
case. At the same time, it was for him to weigh up and assess the manner and
timing of the summary dismissal complained of, and in that context to draw any
relevant inferences from the way in which the defenders themselves had behaved
over the preceding weeks. Having carried out these exercises the
Lord Ordinary concluded that, as at 1 September 2008, the defenders had no
legitimate basis for taking the precipitate and exceptional course of summary
dismissal. Even if our own impression, as an appellate court, had been that
the decision could have gone either way, we would not have felt it appropriate
to interfere with the judgment of a Lord Ordinary who had had the benefit
of seeing and hearing all of the witnesses. At the very least, in our view, it
was open to the Lord Ordinary to decide the case as he did.
[11] On reviewing all the circumstances of this
case, however, our inclination is to go further in supporting the
Lord Ordinary's judgment. We can well understand and sympathise with the
reasoning which led him to sustain the pursuer's claim of wrongful dismissal,
not least his view that the August incidents, and especially the final
telephone call branded by the defenders as "... the last straw", were not of such
a serious nature as to amount to repudiation of the employment contract. On
the evidence the pursuer had apparently shown great kindness towards the
foreign player in question, and even though the call clearly caught him at a
bad moment on a Sunday evening we are unable to accept that this entitled the
defenders to treat the whole employment relationship as being at an end.
Disposal
[12] For
all of these reasons, we shall refuse this reclaiming motion and affirm the
interlocutors of the Lord Ordinary dated 1 September and
22 December, both 2010.