It happens regularly: as soon as the employee knows that the end of his employment contract is in sight, he quickly downloads a few more files.
Even though the employment contract clearly states that this is not allowed it happens regularly. Often without consequences.
In this case, however, both the employer and the court thought otherwise.
Employee joined Ocean APS on 1 April 2022 under a fixed-term employment contract. Ocean is a data platform that focuses on optimising sales and marketing within companies through a self-developed algorithm and its own database. Customers can access the data platform by signing a subscription with Ocean.
On 8 June 2022, Ocean notified employee that it would not renew his employment contract. Employee was considered for immediate termination of the employment contract with a termination payment of three months’ salary.
It was agreed that Ocean would prepare a draft settlement agreement.
Ocean found on 20 June 2022 that a large amount of datasets had been downloaded using employee’s account on 8 June 2022 and 13 June 2022. Employee was summarily dismissed a day later.
Employee disagreed and went to court, arguing that the summary dismissal was unjustified and even requesting fair compensation (which in my opinion was quite stupid!).
The subdistrict court ruled on 22nd November 2022 that there was indeed an urgent reason for immediate dismissal. Ocean had substantiated the downloads by the employee with information from a third party – the downloading by him was therefore established. Ocean had a well-founded suspicion that employee would or could use the datasets elsewhere. In fact, employee had started working at another company that falls under the target of the datasets. The combination of the quantity of downloaded datasets, the timing of these downloads, employee’s involvement with the competitor, as well as the lack of a proper explanation by employee, means that at the time of the immediate dismissal, Ocean’s suspicions about employee’s behaviour were sufficiently well-founded that the immediate dismissal was justified.
This is a great example of (i) how not to do it when you are an employee and (ii) how to do it when faced with such a situation as an employer.
A summary dismissal is not easy and should not be assumed too quickly, but dealing carefully and purposefully in an obvious situation also provides a precedent to other employees.
