In its judgement of 26 September 2012, the Labour Court of Duisburg ruled that the dismissal of an employee who had posted insulting comments on Facebook was only invalid due to the particularities of the individual case.
The plaintiff, who has been employed by the defendant since 2008, had called work colleagues "bacon rolls" and "smart alecks", among other things, on his Facebook page.
The Labour Court pointed out that gross insults to the employer or colleagues can justify dismissal even without a prior warning. This also applies to entries in social networks such as "facebook". In the opinion of the Labour Court, such an entry cannot be equated with a literal statement among colleagues, but rather encroaches on the rights of the persons concerned in the long term, since the entry can be read again and again as long as it is not deleted. In the case to be decided, it was irrelevant from the point of view of the labour court whether the entry was only accessible to the so-called friends and friends of friends on "facebook" users. It was undisputed between the parties that a large number of work colleagues were "facebook" friends of the plaintiff and had read the entry.
The labor court nevertheless considered the dismissal without prior warning to be invalid. The plaintiff had written a comment after learning that colleagues had unjustly denounced him to his employer and thus, in the view of the labor court, acted in the heat of the moment. In addition, the fact that he did not name his colleagues and that they were therefore easily identifiable from the "facebook" entry spoke in favor of the plaintiff.
Duisburg Labor Court, judgment dated September 26, 2012, file number 5 Ca 949/12
Source: Press release of the Duisburg Labour Court
Goldberg Attorneys at Law 2012
Attorney at Law Michael Ullrich, LL.M. (Information Law)
Specialist lawyer for information technology law
E-mail: info@goldberg.de
