Wrongful dismissal

Examples of wrongful dismissal

There are a number of examples of where there would be a claim for wrongful dismissal and these include.

• Breach of an expressed or implied notice period – This is the most common claim for wrongful dismissal and is concerned with an employer’s failure to give an employee their notice entitlement. There are a number of ways to ascertain your notice entitlement, it might be stated in your contract of employment or if your contract is silent on this, then the statutory minimum notice period is implied and applies. If your contract states that you are entitled to receive payment in lieu of notice then your employer has the ability to dismiss you without notice, but will pay you for your contracted notice period. Your employer can also dismiss you without notice if you are found to have carried out a repudiatory breach of contract.
• Termination of a fixed-term contract – Termination of a fixed-term contract before the expiry of the contract.
• Breach of a contractual procedure – Breach of a contractual procedure. If there is a clause in your contract of employment which states that a procedure should be followed in the case of redundancy or there is a disciplinary procedure to be followed, the employer’s failure to follow it amounts to wrongful dismissal. In such situations, you can claim for loss of wages for the period of time that it would have taken to carry out the procedure.