Mr Hawes and Mr Curtis were the two key holders to the company's store in Liverpool Street station. They were summarily dismissed when the company concluded that one or both of them were responsible for the theft of a significant amount of stock.
A letter from the company confirmed that their effective date of termination (EDT) was 4 November. That was the date of their internal appeal being rejected.
Tribunal claims followed. While the parties were preparing for the hearing, the company began to make reference to the EDT being 5 October,the date of the dismissal rather than of the appeal. If that were right then the claims had been brought too late.
The employment tribunal held that the claims were in time. Both parties had believed that the EDT was 4 November. The claimants had been paid to that date and there had been no suggestion of an earlier EDT in correspondence, in the ET1 or ET3, or until much further down the line.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal agreed. It said that the EDT doesn't always crystalise on the date of summary dismissal. An internal appeal is integral to the protection of employment rights and can result in the EDT being changed (perhaps the employer takes the decision on appeal to dismiss on notice, rather than summarily, for example). While it's unusual for an employer to vary the date of dismissal at the internal appeal stage, that is what happened here.
A cautionary note: the EDT must still be determined objectively and not every agreement between an employer and employee will effectively change the date.
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