A CAR salesman who attempted to sell a car for his own profit without the knowledge of his employer, who owned the vehicle, has been awarded almost €3,000 by the Employment Appeals Tribunal.
During the hearing individuals representing a Co Mayo garage gave evidence that the salesman had instructed a junior salesman to park a Peugeot 406 car at the back of the garage with a “sold” sign on it, although no paperwork was in place for the car.
An advertisement subsequently placed in a dealer magazine offered a similar Peugeot 406 for sale, which representatives for the garage claimed was the property of the garage.
Two witnesses gave evidence that they responded to the advert for the Peugeot 406 in the magazine. They claimed that, when they telephoned the mobile number on the advert, the salesman answered and discussed the price of the car.
The owner of the business accepted that he did not record or document work-performance issues relating to the claimant and there was no record of any warnings placed on his personnel file.
He accepted that he should have issued the claimant with a written warning but said he had “never come across these issues in his 42 years in business”.
In his evidence the salesman denied all knowledge of the Peugeot 406. But the tribunal found that, on the balance of probabilities, he did attempt to sell the car.
The tribunal found that the salesman had breached his duty in upholding the relationship of confidence and trust to his employer in attempting to sell the car and that his employer had ample justification to dismiss him on the grounds of gross misconduct.
However, the employer did not dismiss the salesman at a subsequent disciplinary meeting in March 2009. Instead he was put on a final warning with six months’ probation. However, he was then dismissed a week later.
“The inescapable conclusion is that the respondents had second thoughts about the mercy given to the claimant, and decided to dismiss him after all,” the tribunal said.
So it found that the salesman was unfairly dismissed but determined that he had contributed “to an extremely large extent” to his own dismissal and awarded him €2,820.