heard in an employment tribunal, and there is a cap on the maximum allowable amount for compensation. On the other hand, wrongful dismissal is governed by the rules of common law, and cases of wrongful dismissal are normally heard in the ordinary courts such as the county court or the High Court.


As we have seen, wrongful dismissal follows the rules of the common law. And in that sense, of course, the precedents set in the case law are very important and you will need to study the facts in the cases I refer to very carefully in order to understand how the judges have interpreted, for example, breaches of contract. Thus, in wrongful dismissal cases, the judges are not concerned with the statutory provisions per se but in the application of the principles established by the common law. These can be quite complex, as you can see in the case of Gunton v Richmond-upon-Thames [1980]. Briefly, the facts of the case were that Gunton was employed as a college registrar and was dismissed from his employment because he was subject to disciplinary procedures. Gunton sued for wrongful dismissal on the grounds that he was not given notice. Previous cases established that even if an employee is wrongfully dismissed, he is only entitled to claim for damages for the loss of salary he would have received instead of notice. He is not entitled to sue for damages for the demeaning way in which the dismissal occurred, or for any loss of reputation caused by the dismissal. The common law rule of mitigation also applies. The sacked employee is under a duty to mitigate the loss of salary by looking for alternative employment.


You may consider that the common law appears to favour the employer rather than the employee. Research has shown that in fact the courts did frequently find in favour of the employer. If you study the relevant transcripts you will see a number of references to the master/servant relationship. Many of the earlier cases were, of course, heard during the Victorian period in 19th- century Britain, when about a third of the working population worked in domestic service. In those days, it could be argued that the employers’ rights were upheld because the judges belonged to the same class and had domestic servants themselves.


Now, where was I? Oh yes, right, I was talking about the importance of the rules of common law in cases involving wrongful dismissal. It was held that Gunton was only entitled to damages for loss of salary. He was dismissed by his employer,


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therefore his contract came to an end. He was entitled to sue for breach of contract, because the terms of his employment were broken. If you want another good example, look at the case of Boyo v Lambeth Borough Council [1994] to see how the judges viewed the precedent set in Gunton.


A further important point about wrongful dismissal is that it deals with what is a very important point for a sacked employee: compensation in the form of damages. If you’re dismissed from your job, you don’t necessarily want to get your job back, but you do want to be compensated for the loss of salary and also for all the other problems associated with suddenly becoming unemployed. If you remember, in contract law, damages are paid to restore the parties to the original position they were in before the contract was breached. This can cover wages or salary which should have been paid during the notice period, and holiday pay and loss of pension, as well as other perks, such as a company car. Employees can also claim interest on the whole amount from the time they lost their job to the court hearing.


So what exactly have we looked at this morning? Well, to sum up, we need to understand that the major difference between unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal is that unfair dismissal is an invention of statutory law whereas wrongful dismissal follows the common law rules. Well, how does this actually affect the people who have lost their jobs? They might think of this as nothing more than legal semantics, but it may have an outcome on their cases in a number of different ways.


Firstly, whereas unfair dismissal can only be claimed if a person has at least one year’s continuous service, there is no such restriction with wrongful dismissal. Secondly, unfair dismissal is regulated by statute and must go through a two-stage test. Stage 1: Was the dismissal for a fair reason? Stage 2: If the dismissal was fair, was the dismissal dealt with by following the correct procedures? In wrongful dismissal there must have been a breach of the contract of employment. A third major difference is that cases of unfair dismissal are heard before an employment tribunal whereas cases of wrongful dismissal are normally heard in the ordinary courts.


So it should be clear that these three major


differences have very practical applications for the people who have lost their jobs. They’re not just esoteric concepts that we lawyers love to debate.


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