True, but that isn’t illegal. What the other two did was illegal. By any standard their misconduct was greater, but they weren’t fired.
When asked why, Morris put it this way:- if you fired everyone who drink drives, then all someone who wants to leave has to do is get drunk and caught drink driving, then leave on a free and get a big salary increase and singing on fee at another club.
He’s right of course, but this sort of explains it. Keogh was expensive, coming to the end of a contact and wouldn’t play again because of his injury, The others were going to be available to play, and were probably valuable in terms of a transfer fee. So you get rid of Keogh and give the other two a written warning and a temporary suspension. That sounds a bit like discrimination, hence the tribunal case.
I think it would be difficult to not know that Lawrence wasn't over the limit. They were all out drinking with each other. They also had the option of club chartered taxis, which they turned down.
On top of that Keogh himself was not wearing a seat belt when they crashed (which is against UK law). He isn't a blameless party, there were things that he could and should have done, that would have prevented all this.
Although, yes, he wasn't the actual person behind the wheel. He was the one that made the decision to turn down alternative transport, get in a car with someone over the limit and then make the decision to not wear a seat belt.
Maybe he didn’t knew the driver was over the limit. Maybe he trusted the driver when he said he could drive. He could have asked if anyone at the party was sober enough to drive him home as he’d had too much to drink. Still I wouldn’t expect to be sacked because my coworker crashed his car after having too much to drink.
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