Raja Azlan Shah J:

The plaintiff claims damages against the defendants for wrongful dismissal. He contends that the dismissal without sufficient reason and without proper notice is wrongful and actionable. The ground of dismissal which is alleged against him in the pleading is misconduct, which in the particulars enumerated in para. 4 thereof consisted of wilful disobedience to the lawful and reasonable orders of the defendants in the course of employment and insolence to the defendants' assistant manager in the course of the said employment. Upon the pleadings which I have stated two material contentions were raised on behalf of the plaintiff. Whether the facts justify summary dismissal; if not, was there proper notice for such dismissal.

It is well-established law that wilful disobedience of a lawful and reasonable order of the employer will justify, summary dismissal. It is also axiomatic that one act of disobedience or misconduct can justify instant dismissal if it is of a nature which goes to show that the servant is repudiating the contract or one of its essential conditions: see Laws v. London Chronicle (Indicator Newspapers) Ltd. [1959] 2 All ER 285, 287, 288. This point was re-stated in the recent case of Sinclair v. Neighbour [1967] 2 WLR 1. In that case the manager of a bettingshop, responsible for the conduct of the shop and the employees there, quite deliberately took money out of the till for his own personal purposes in circumstances which he knew quite well his employer, if asked, would not permit. He replaced the money on the following day. The employer, on hearing of what had happened, dismissed him summarily. The Court of Appeal, in reversing the decision of the trial Judge, held that the facts justified summary dismissal. Davies LJ at p. 5 of the judgment said:

With the greatest respect to the Judge, I think that he fell into error in attaching too much weight to the label and not enough to the facts. The facts were established. The fact that the manager took the money from his employer's till behind his back knowing that the employer would not consent was established; and it seems to me that it does not really matter very much whether that justifies the label 'dishonest' or not. The Judge ought to have gone on to consider whether even if falling short of dishonesty the manager's conduct was nevertheless conduct of such a grave and weighty character as to amount to a breach of the confidential relationship between master and servant, such as would render the servant unfit for continuance in the master's employment and give the master the right to discharge him immediately.

Sachs LJ paraphrased the matter in the following way:

It is well-established law that a servant can be instantly dismissed when his conduct is such that it not only amounts to a wrongful act inconsistent with his duty towards his master but is also inconsistent with the continuance of confidence between them. That was said by Brown LJ in his classic judgment in Boston Deep Sea Fishing and Ice Co. v. Ansell [1888] 39 Ch D 339, 363, CA.

The fact that the master has not heard the servant in his own defence is irrelevant; the criterion is whether facts emerging at the trial prove breach of contract. If the facts do not warrant summary dismissal, the master must pay damages; see Ridge v. Baldwin [1963] 2 All ER 66, 71. The onus is on the defendants to prove that summary dismissal was justified: see Savage v. British India Steam Navigation Co. Ltd. 46 TLR 295.

Having stated the law, let me now turn to the facts of this case. The plaintiff was employed by the defendants as an estate conductor in Div 11 of the estate since 1960. On 5 January 1965 the assistant manager of the defendants reported to the manager of discrepancies between the lower grades net weights of latex from Div II of the estate and the weights at the main factory. Both the scales were later checked and found to be correct. The manager then wrote a letter dated 6