This could be the first EAT case dealing with dismissal for the misuse of Twitter in the workplace. It involved a risk and loss prevention investigator for Game, who decided to follow the 100 or so stores Twitter feeds in order to check for misuse or signs of fraud etc. He set up his own Twitter account to do this, albeit he did not identify himself as a Game employee. One store encouraged 64 others to follow this follower in turn. 

Mr Laws posted several offensive Tweets and, when it was discovered he was the source and an employee, he was eventually dismissed. The original tribunal found the dismissal unfair and the UKEAT has overturned that finding and has ordered a rehearing restricted to legal arguments on the range of reasonable responses test and the application of that test in respect of the sanction.

One of the more interesting issues in this case was the respondent's request that the EAT lay down guidance for social media misuse cases. The EAT refused to do so. It considered many points to be either so obvious or so general as to be largely unhelpful. Instead, the EAT reiterated the range of reasonable responses test set out in Iceland Frozen Foods Ltd v Jones [1982] IRLR 439:

"The test to be applied by ETs is that laid down in Jones; that is, whether the employer’s decision and the process in reaching that decision fell within the range of reasonable responses open to the reasonable employer on the facts of the particular case. That test is sufficiently flexible to permit of its application in contexts that cannot have been envisaged when it was laid down. The questions that arise will always be fact-sensitive and that is true in social-media cases as much as others. For us to lay down a list of criteria by way of guidance runs the risk of encouraging a tick-box mentality that is inappropriate in unfair-dismissal cases."
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