Wrongful Dismissal in UK Law

In the end one comes back to the question: Is the plaintiff's receipt of unemployment benefit a matter too remote to be taken into consideration in ascertaining his net loss resulting from the wrongful dismissal? The dismissal caused the plaintiff to become unemployed, and therefore entitled, as a matter of general right under the systemof State insurance and not "by virtue of any private insurance policy of his own, to receive unemployment benefit.

If the only real redress is damages, how can its measure or scope be affected according to whether the contract is regarded as still subsisting or as at an end? To preserve the bare contractual relationship is an empty formality. The difference is fundamental, for there is no legal substitute for voluntary performance.

It was said that that precedent or analogy should be followed in this case. But in the ordinary case of master and servant the repudiation or the wrongful dismissal puts an end to the contract, and the contract having been wrongfully put an end to a claim for damages arises. The nature of the bargain is such that it can be nothing more.

— something done by the employee which impliedly or expressly is a repudiation of the fundamental terms of the contract; and in my Judgment if ever there was such a repudiation this is it. He is to look after the garden and he is to look after the greenhouse. If he does not care a hoot about either then he is repudiating his contract. That is what it seems to me Pepper did, and I do not see, having done that, that he can complain if he is summarily dismissed.

The statutory code provides remedies for infringement of the statutory right not to be dismissed unfairly. If before his dismissal, whether actual or constructive, an employee has acquired a cause of action at law, for breach of contract or otherwise, that cause of action remains unimpaired by his subsequent unfair dismissal and the statutory rights flowing therefrom. By definition, in law such a cause of action exists independently of the dismissal.

The law is concerned with legal obligations only and the law of contract only with legal obligations created by mutual agreement between contractors - not with the expectations, however reasonable, of one contractor that the other will do something that he has assumed no legal obligation to do.

Thus, loss which an employee would have suffered even if the dismissal had been after due notice is irrecoverable, because such loss does not derive from the wrongful element in the dismissal. But the manner and circumstances of the dismissal, as measured by the standards of conduct now identified in the implied trust and confidence term, may give rise to such a handicap. The law would be blemished if this were not recognised today.