- Establishing ‘the reason’ for dismissal in an organisation.
- Public interest and the claimant’s motivation.
The cases considered this month concern the law on protection of whistleblowers (as it happens, at the same time as the EU has produced a draft Directive on this issue, which hitherto has been purely a question of UK domestic law). The first, and most important, is the decision of the Supreme Court on how to determine the thinking/motivation of ‘the employer’ in an organisation, in particular where the dismissing manager has genuinely done so for another reason, but has been misled by another manager seeking revenge on the whistleblower. As will be seen, the significance of this case extends to other areas of unfair dismissal law. The second case is a decision of the Court of Appeal on the important but potentially difficult element of ‘public interest’ and the claimant’s motivation in making the disclosure(s)
