The Claimant was a bus driver and he was dismissed after he drove a bus into a patch of flooded road and the bus started to fill up with water. He claimed that he did not realise how deep the water was until it was too late. The Respondent claimed that the Claimant's manager had told him that that stretch of road was closed because of flooding but the Claimant denied that he had been told about it. The ET concluded that the Claimant was correct and that they were not persuaded that a reasonable employer would have characterised the error, given the surrounding circumstances, as being evidence of 'gross incompetence' or sufficient to summarily dismiss. The Respondent appealed.

The EAT dismissed the appeal. The judge was entitled to reject the evidence of the respondent's managers' when the claimant had given contrary evidence, and had understood and applied the different legal approaches to unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal.