{"id":601,"date":"2016-08-31T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.olexo.com.au\/bartlett-v-australia-new-zealand-banking-group-ltd-2016-nswca-31\/"},"modified":"2016-08-31T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T23:00:00","slug":"bartlett-v-australia-new-zealand-banking-group-ltd-2016-nswca-31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/?p=601","title":{"rendered":"ANZ ordered to pay $110,000 in damages to employee dismissed for alleged serious misconduct"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published 31 August 2016<\/em><\/p>\n

The New South Wales Court of Appeal overturned a 2014 ruling and ordered ANZ to pay $110,000 in damages to an employee who was summarily dismissed after alleged serious misconduct.<\/p>\n

In 2012, Mr Bartlett was summarily dismissed from his position as State Director of ANZ\u2019s Institutional Property Group due to alleged serious misconduct. ANZ believed Mr Bartlett had altered a confidential internal email and then forwarded this email to a journalist.<\/p>\n

In the initial hearing the Court rejected Mr Bartlett\u2019s claims and ruled that the summary dismissal was justified (Bartlett\u00a0v Australia\u00a0and New Zealand Banking Group Limited<\/em> [2014] NSWSC 1662<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In appeal, the Bench believed that as per the employment contract, ANZ\u2019s ability to dismiss Mr Bartlett was contingent on whether the misconduct had occurred rather than whether ANZ believed it had occurred.<\/p>\n

ANZ\u2019s investigation into the incident was limited to the 10 employees that had received the email and one other employee. The Appeal Bench believed this was unwarranted as a large number of people could have gained access to the email.<\/p>\n

ANZ relied on a handwriting report to \u2018prove\u2019 Mr Bartlett had sent the email to the journalist. ANZ did not provide Mr Bartlett with a copy of the report and as a result, he was unable to respond to the report. This was in breach with the Bank\u2019s Performance Policy. The Performance Policy required an employee \u201cto have a reasonable opportunity to respond\u201d to allegations made against them and any evidence used to support these allegations. The Bench recognised this breach and believed the actions of ANZ were unfair.<\/p>\n

Further, the Bench found ANZ had not sufficiently established that Mr Bartlett was the author of the writing on the envelope addressed to the journalist because evidence was given that there were \u201cfundamental and consistent\u201d differences between the handwriting on the envelope and Mr Bartlett\u2019s handwriting.<\/p>\n

As such, the Bench ruled ANZ was not entitled to dismiss Mr Bartlett without notice because it was not proved on the balance of probabilities that his handwriting was on the envelop and that he had committed the misconduct.<\/p>\n

The Bench ruled if ANZ had not summarily dismissed Mr Bartlett, they would have terminated his employment immediately and provided him four months\u2019 pay. This was based on ANZ\u2019s belief that Mr Bartlett was guilty of sending the email.<\/p>\n

The Bench ordered ANZ to pay Mr Bartlett $110,000 plus interest in damages. The Bench also ordered ANZ to pay Mr Bartlett the costs of the original proceeding and half the costs of the appeal.<\/p>\n

Read the full decision here<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

This content is general in nature and provides a summary of the issues covered. It is not intended to be, nor should it be relied upon, as legal or professional advice for specific employment situations.<\/p>\n

Working Knowledge recommends that specialist legal advice should be sought about specific legal issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published 31 August 2016 The New South Wales Court of Appeal overturned a 2014 ruling and ordered ANZ to pay $110,000 in damages to an employee who was summarily dismissed after alleged serious misconduct. In 2012, Mr Bartlett was summarily dismissed from his position as State Director of ANZ\u2019s Institutional Property Group due to alleged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workn.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}