Post Office v Liddiard, unreported, Court of Appeal 7 June 2001
The Court of Appeal have held that it may be fair of the Post Office to dismiss a football hooligan because of the press coverage of his offences. Mr. Liddiard attended the England v Tunisia game in Marseilles in January 1999. In clashes between rival supporters Mr. Liddiard admitted that he had thrown bottles at the Tunisian fans and was charged with an armed attack on a Police Officer with aggravating circumstances. He was tried and convicted in France and sentenced to 40 days imprisonment.
The case was subjected to considerable publicity in the tabloids and even comments from the Prime Minister that he hoped the employers would take strong action. As a result of this publicity; rather than the actual conviction, the Post Office suspended Mr. Liddiard and charged him with gross misconduct and subsequently dismissed him for bringing the Post Office into disrepute.
Mr. Liddiard won his case at the Employment Tribunal and the initial appeal of the Post Office was unsuccessful, so they took their appeal to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal were not impressed with the decision of the EAT which they described as "unconvincing" and found that the Tribunal had made several errors of law.
Although the Tribunal are not referred to the Haddon case, the Court of Appeal felt that the Tribunal's decision was influenced by that case and had accordingly failed to properly consider the "range of reasonable responses" test in Section 98 (4). The Court of Appeal once again upheld Foley v Post Office (see LELR 50, September 2000).
The essential argument on behalf of Mr. Liddiard was that the decision to dismiss had been based upon newspaper and political pressure. The Court of Appeal felt that the Tribunal had misunderstood the position of the Post Office. They had dismissed because he had brought the Post Office into disrepute and the articles in the press and the statements by politicians were evidence of that, rather than the cause of that.
Accordingly the employers were entitled to take into account newspaper coverage of the matter to support the dismissal. In other words it is reasonable for an employer to bow to pressure from newspapers: an increase in press powers that has been resisted by the government in the case of Jo Moore, Stephen Byers' special advisor, following her memo suggesting 11 September would be a good day for burying news.
Mr. Liddiard had also contended that he was innocent of the charge. Apparently the Tribunal had been persuaded by this argument but the Court of Appeal rejected it. They said that the employer was perfectly entitled to rely upon a conviction in France just as much as they were entitled to rely upon a conviction in England. There was an attempt by Mr. Liddiard to rely upon the Human Rights Act and to attack Section 98. This was not really pursued at the Appeal but the Court of Appeal indicated that they did not believe that there was anything in the Human Rights Act that required Sectoon 98 to be construed and applied any way differently from the previous cases. Although this bit of the decision was not technically part of the judgment, it does not help with the argument that the band of reasonable responses denies a dismissed employee a fair hearing as the Tribunal's powers are so fettered.