Mrs Turner worked as a conductor for East Midlands Trains for twelve years. The handheld ticket machines sometimes produced faulty unsaleable tickets. When the train company discovered Mrs Turner had issued 132 faulty tickets during a period when other conductors had issued 20 or less, they dismissed her for gross misconduct, believing she had interfered with the machine to generate faulty tickets, selling these to passengers and keeping the proceeds. The tribunal upheld the dismissal, concluding that the employer had behaved within the band of responses of a reasonable employer under the test in BHS v Burchell [1980] IRC 303.

Mrs Turner argued that the “band of reasonable responses” test was not appropriate where the outcome of the dismissal would impair her right to a private life. The Court of Appeal accepted that Article 8 is engaged in situations where someone is accused of fraud, as the outcome involves their private life. European law has established that respect for private life can extend to the workplace — the right to establish and develop relationships (including professional relationships) with other human beings.

However, the Court of Appeal decided that the “band of reasonable responses” test already complies with human rights law, because the tribunal already imposes higher standards of procedural fairness on an employer, the more serious the outcome for the worker (Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust v Roldan [2010] IRLR 721).

Turner v East Midlands Trains [2012] EWCA Civ 1470