Generally on immediate termination of employment

Immediate termination of employment by the employer is interpreted by law as exceptional. It is reserved for the most serious cases of misconduct on the part of the employee towards the employer. Moreover, it should only apply to those cases where, instead of terminating the employment relationship by giving notice, the employer proceeds to a more radical solution, as he cannot fairly be required to continue to employ the employee[1].

As mentioned above, an employer is entitled to terminate an employee's employment immediately only in a very narrow range of cases. If we disregard employees who have been convicted as perpetrators of statutory offences, the specific situations are only those in which: 1) the employee breaches an obligation arising from the legislation relating to the work performed by him in a particularly serious manner[2] and, at the same time, as the case law suggests, for the given case 2) the sanction of termination of employment by notice for a serious breach of an obligation arising from the legislation relating to the work performed by the employee[3] should not suffice.

However, the hypothesis for the fulfillment of the conditions for immediate termination of employment is very vague and is therefore often subject to interpretation by the courts in disputes on the determination of the invalidity of immediate termination of employment. Therefore, the first question to be answered in this article is the following: What are the consequences of an attack by an employee on the employer's property in terms of assessing the degree of intensity of the employee's breach of his/her employment obligation?

As to the attack on the employer's property as a particularly serious breach of the employee's work obligation

With regard to the interpretation of what conduct may be considered as a breach of an employee's duties in connection with the performance of work in a particularly gross manner, it is necessary to rely primarily on the current case law of the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic (hereinafter referred to as the "SC"), which is quite settled in the context of an attack on the employer's property:

"An attack on the employer's property, whether direct (e.g., by theft, damage, misuse) or indirect (e.g., by attempting to siphon off part of the employer's property without adequate consideration), is usually sufficient in itself to conclude that the employee has committed a particularly gross violation of the employee's obligations under the law relating to his or her work."[4]

However, as we have already seen, the conclusion that there has been a particularly serious breach of the employee's obligations under the law relating to his work is not sufficient in itself to justify immediate termination of employment. It is also necessary to meet the second condition, which can be deduced from the now established relevant case law of the Supreme Court - the employer cannot be fairly required to continue to employ the employee, i.e. even during the notice period that would otherwise run on the basis of the employer's termination of employment for that reason.

Is it always possible to immediately terminate the employment of an employee who has committed an attack on the employer's property?

Employment relationships are based on the principle of special legal protection of the employee's position[5] and immediate termination of employment is an exceptional institution for this reason. It is based on the idea that the loss of employment from one day to the next may have an existential impact on the employee's sphere of life, and therefore termination by notice is preferred in the widest possible range of employment cases.

However, can an employer really be fairly required to continue to employ an employee who is guilty of an attack on the employer's property, even if only temporarily during the notice period, or, for example, to take certain protective measures to prevent such an employee from continuing to attack the employer's property? In a relatively recent decision, the Supreme Court has also tried to answer this question satisfactorily:

"An employer cannot fairly be required to take any measures to protect his property in relation to an employee who has committed an attack on the employer's property during the notice period, and thus to expend efforts and, if necessary, financial resources to employ an employee who otherwise meets the statutory prerequisites for immediate termination of employment without fear for his property during the notice period."[6]

Thus, in this second commented decision, the Supreme Court took the position that the principle of special statutory protection of the employee's position in labor relations is not something absolute that would limit the employer's understandable conduct. It is no less important to interpret this principle in accordance with the legitimate interests of the employer. Thus, if in a particular case the necessary mutual trust between the employee and the employer has been undermined and the reliability of the employee in relation to the employer's assets has been called into question,[7] immediate termination of the employment relationship appears to be an adequate remedy.

In this context, it should also be noted that the amount of the damage caused by the employee's deliberate attack on the employer's property does not, in itself, have much bearing on the assessment of whether the necessary mutual trust between the employee and the employer and the employee's reliability in relation to the employer's property have actually been undermined[8]. In many cases, even the essentially very small amount of damage caused by the employee in this way has stood up to judicial scrutiny[9].

Thus, the case law of the Supreme Court holds that due to a proven deliberate attack by an employee on the employer's property, it is possible (subject to other statutory prerequisites) to immediately terminate the employment relationship with such an employee almost always, regardless of the amount of the damage thus caused or regardless of whether the employer would have the opportunity to protect its property during the notice period against potential further deliberate attacks by the employee.

Conclusion

An employee may be guilty of several degrees of seriousness (intensity) of breach of his/her employment obligations, which determine the possible consequences on the part of the employer, and immediate termination of employment is only the most extreme instrument for dealing with the employee's misconduct, which in itself is a certain manifestation of the protective function of labor law in favor of the employee. Thus, the specific circumstances of each case must always be assessed.

However, it can be summarized that where the trust between the employee and the employer is so damaged because of concerns about the continuation of deliberate attacks on his property, the employer cannot fairly be required to continue to employ such an employee (even if only for the duration of the notice period) and summary dismissal is a legally permissible solution to the whole situation.

In the context of the employee's demonstrably deliberate attack on the employer's property, it is therefore highly probable, in view of the above, that if the employee had initiated litigation to determine the invalidity of the employer's immediate termination of employment on this ground, the court would have ruled in favor of the employer. However, this presupposes that the employer complies with all the other conditions laid down by law in this exceptional method of terminating the employment relationship, in particular the short statutory time limits within which the employment relationship may be terminated immediately.

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