UPDATED A High Court majority has clarified that a 115-year-old UK House of Lords decision does not bar the recovery of damages for botched sackings, restoring the award of $1.44 million to a consultant unable to work since his "sham" dismissal in 2015.
The FWC has upheld the sacking of a long-serving Queensland Rail protection officer who took cocaine on the morning of his rostered night shift and claimed he only started using the drug to cope with the stress of a workplace investigation.
A Federal Court judge has cast doubt over a manager's $1.5 million adverse action payout in a ruling highlighting the difficulty in establishing who in large corporations ultimately makes the decision to dismiss an employee.
An engineer who lost a close relative in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict was clearly offended when a manager directed him to move his desk into a project "war room", but his refusal still provided a valid reason for his dismissal, the FWC has found.
A FWC presidential member has underlined that workers are not immune from retrenchment while on leave or working under flexible arrangements, confirming that operational issues warranting severance can arise at any time.
A recruitment company leader seeking to challenge the restraints in his employment contract and a shareholder agreement has been allowed to continue the case in NSW, after related entities in Great Britain failed to convince the Federal Court to stay the matter because of an exclusive jurisdiction clause.
The FWC has found it "disproportionate" to summarily sack a HR general manager accused of creating an "unsafe" environment for her team and calling for their heads when they gave negative feedback, while also rejecting the employer's inference that she opportunistically used her distress over the outbreak of the Israel-Palestine war to explain her conduct.
A presidential member placed too much emphasis on two workers' failure to chase up their unfair dismissal applications, a FWC full bench has ruled, finding the representative's miscalculation of the due date responsible for the whole delay.
A FWC full bench has refused to extend time for a HR business partner seeking to appeal her unfair dismissal decision, finding she had failed to demonstrate any legal errors and instead merely showed "a preference for a different result".
The FWC has allowed a 79-day-late unfair dismissal application after accepting an aged care worker relied on the advice of an immigration lawyer to initially contest her sacking through two health regulators.
