A ruling that Dundee City Council unfairly dismissed a joiner has been set aside on appeal.
Benjamin Sharp was sacked in 2009 after 35 years’ service, having been off sick for just over a year.
A tribunal in Dundee decided the council should have made more effort to clarify Mr Sharp’s medical condition, especially as a doctor had said his health was improving.
In the absence of that clarification ”no reasonable employer” would have dismissed someone with such long service.
The council appealed to a panel chaired by judge Lady Smith, which has ruled that length of service was not relevant and the tribunal had ”set the bar too high” in concluding the council should have made further inquiries.
The case will now come back to a freshly-constituted tribunal in Dundee to decide whether or not the council should have waited longer before dismissing Mr Sharp.
