The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has clarified that there are only limited circumstances in which an employee's unambiguous words of resignation should not be relied upon because they can be regarded as being given in the heat of the moment (Ali v Birmingham City Council).
Mr Mohammed Ali worked for Birmingham City Council as a data entry clerk. On 25 April 2007, Mr Ali handed in his resignation to his manager. He claimed that at the time he was very stressed for personal reasons and was not 'thinking straight'.
On being given Mr Ali's resignation letter, his manager sought the advice of the Council's Human Resources (HR) department and, as a consequence, offered him a cooling-off period to reconsider his decision. When she returned 20 minutes later, Mr Ali appeared to be getting upset so she gave him more time. After a further 10 minutes, Mr Ali asked his manager to return to the room and confirmed that he did wish to tender his resignation. This was accepted.
On 27 April, Mr Ali rang the HR department asking about his 'rights' and was told that as he had effectively resigned, he did not have an automatic right to return. He said he needed more time to think about it.
On 30 April, Mr Ali's manager received an email from him saying that he had resigned whilst he was extremely stressed and now realised that this had been a mistake. He was informed that a decision had been made not to reinstate his contract of employment.
Mr Ali claimed that he had been unfairly dismissed but the Employment Tribunal (ET) found that he had resigned and could not therefore bring a claim. Mr Ali appealed against this decision on the grounds that special circumstances existed in his case which justified making an exception. He had resigned in the heat of the moment, so there was no real resignation and he also contended that he had not been given a reasonable amount of time to reflect on his decision.
The EAT dismissed the appeal. There are very limited circumstances in which the unambiguous words of a resignation should not be relied upon, one of which is if it is given in the heat of the moment. The ET had given careful consideration to the circumstances in this case and found that there was no evidence that Mr Ali acted in the heat of the moment when he resigned. He had persisted in his desire to do so after he had been given a number of opportunities to reflect on the matter. Furthermore, where such circumstances do exist, case law states that the appropriate period allowed to an employee to change their mind is 'likely to be a day or two' (Kwik-Fit GB Limited v Lineham). Mr Ali did not ask for his resignation to be rescinded until more than four days after he had tendered it.
Says Dean Parnell, "In this case, the EAT found that the period of reflection allowed to Mr Ali on the day he resigned was sufficient to show that his decision could not be regarded as having been taken in the heat of the moment. However, even had it found otherwise, the time it took him to change his mind was outside the time frame allowed in such circumstances."
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
