If your employer’s investigation found no real evidence, that alone doesn’t make your dismissal unfair.
“Court of Appeal held the dismissal fair: bank's investigation and belief fell within the reasonable-responses range.”
In an unfair dismissalA legal claim you can bring if your employer dismissed you without a fair reason or without following a fair process. You normally need two years of continuous employment to qualify, though some dismi... claim, proving your innocence isn't the test. The test is whether your employer's investigation and belief in your guilt were ones a reasonable employer could have reached.
- Focus any challenge on the investigation itself: what wasn't looked into, and whether your account was genuinely put to the decision maker and considered.
- Understand that your employer doesn't need to prove your guilt beyond doubt, only a reasonable, genuinely-held belief after a reasonable investigation.
- Struggling to judge whether your employer's process tipped from reasonable into unreasonable? That's exactly the point to get advice, before deciding whether to bring a claim.
The situation
An employee worked at two branches of a bank where debit cards had gone missing while he was present. The bank investigated internally, and the police got involved too, but no evidence turned up against him or anyone else. The bank dismissed him anyway. He challenged the dismissal as unfair, and the employment tribunalAn independent court that hears disputes between employees and employers. It is free to bring a claim as a claimant, and most hearings take place in public. agreed. It reasoned the investigation hadn't turned up enough evidence to justify the bank's belief that he was responsible.
What the court found
That reasoning didn't survive appeal: the Court of Appeal took a different view entirely. It held the tribunal had asked the wrong question. Guilt wasn't the tribunal's call to make. Its job was to check whether the bank's investigation, and its resulting belief that the employee was responsible, fell within the range of responses a reasonable employer could have reached on the same facts. Applying the established "band of reasonable responses" test, the Court of Appeal found the bank's decision was within that range, even though the evidence never definitively proved anything. The dismissal was fair.
HSBC Bank plc (formerly Midland Bank plc) v Madden. [2000] EWCA Civ 3030; also cited as Midland Bank plc v Madden [2000] ICR 1283. Court of Appeal. 31 July 2000.