Dismissal Case Study: Paddy V. Starbucks

Introduction
The reputation of an organization is subject to injury once a hindrance such as a lawsuit occurs against it. Lawsuits against a company may be due to dismissal, which may be constructive, wrongful, or automatically unfair. Dismissal is defined as the process of unilateral employee termination by an employer (Gruman & Saks, 2011). The employer may terminate an employee’s contract with or without notice, or the employee’s term may not be renewed upon expiry.
Case Description
In the case of Paddy v. Starbucks 2008, the plaintiff was terminated without notice at Starbucks, where he had worked as a National Account Manager, Business Development for 14.5 years. The case amounted to wrongful dismissal which was awarded based on a 14-month notice period, without further deduction for mitigation opportunities. It was held that the company should pay damages to the plaintiff to obtain replacement long-term disability coverage in addition to extended and basic medical and life insurance coverage, as well as non-salary financial income components, such as

In this case, the plaintiff received a performance rating for the fiscal year ended 2006 whereby he had met expectation rating of 1.9. His performance improved to 2.0 during the first half of 2007 before dropping significantly to a level he was not entitled to performance bonus (Paddy v. Starbucks). However, the plaintiff argued that his level of performance at the time was consistent with past performance although he had experienced some challenges. Afterwards, the defendant terminated the contract without cause and without notice but continued to pay the plaintiff the salary component of his former income as compensation in lieu of a period of