The plaintiff in the present lawsuit had been employed as an account manager by the defendant, a company in the IT sector in Frankfurt, since 1 January 2009. According to the findings of an expert, the plaintiff deleted approximately 80 of his own files and a further 374 objects, namely 144 contacts, 51 emails, 167 tasks and 12 appointments, from his user account at the company on 29 June 2009 at around 23:00 and on 30 June 2009 between 11:02 and 14:50. The background to this were ongoing negotiations between the parties to amend or terminate his employment contract.
On 1 July 2009, the employer discovered the deletions and terminated the plaintiff's employment without notice or, alternatively, with ordinary effect as of 31 August 2009.
The Labour Court considered the dismissal to be justified only as an ordinary dismissal.
The Hessian Regional Labour Court, on the other hand, was of the opinion that the plaintiff's misconduct justified termination without notice.
The extensive deletion of data on 29 and 30 June 2009 had completely destroyed confidence in the integrity of the plaintiff. The data was under the employer's control. An unauthorised deletion by an employee with the resulting internal problems and vis-à-vis customers was such a significant breach of self-evident secondary obligations under the employment contract that the immediate termination of the employment relationship was justified.
A warning, which as a rule must precede a dismissal for reasons of conduct, was also not necessary in this case. The plaintiff had known very well that the deletion of the data would not be accepted by the employer under any circumstances.
The Hesse Regional Labour Court did not allow an appeal to the Federal Labour Court.
Hessisches LAG, judgment of August 5, 2013, file number 7 Sa 1060/10
Previous instance: Frankfurt am Main Labor Court, April 14, 2010, file no. 22 Ca 7129/09
Source: Press release of the Hessian Regional Labour Court
Goldberg Attorneys at Law 2014
Attorney at Law Michael Ullrich, LL.M. (Information Law)
Specialist lawyer for information technology law
E-mail: info@goldberg.de
