[Plaintiff, Appellee]
[Defendant, Appellant] Seungwon Passenger Transportation Co., Ltd., Attorney Kim Kwang-nyeon, Counsel for the Defendant
[Judgment Below] Seoul High Court, Decision 90Na29724, rendered January 11, 1990
[Order]
The appeal is dismissed. The costs of the appeal shall be borne by the Defendant.
[Reasoning]
As to the Defendant's counsel's grounds of appeal
1.
As the Defendant argues, where a person subject to disciplinary action has multiple grounds for disciplinary dismissal, whether such disciplinary dismissal is appropriate should not be determined by considering each ground separately or by considering only some of the grounds, but rather by determining, in light of the entirety of the grounds, whether the employee bears responsibility to such a degree that, according to common social norms, the employment contract cannot be continued.
However, upon examining the reasoning of the judgment below, it can be seen that the court below did not disregard the other disciplinary grounds and rule that this disciplinary action constituted an abuse of the right to discipline by examining each ground individually or only some of the grounds. Rather, after examining the timing of occurrence of each ground, the circumstances of its occurrence, the degree of misconduct, and the circumstances of remediation after the occurrence of each ground, the court below ruled, taking all these circumstances into account, that even considering the several disciplinary grounds found against the Plaintiff as a whole, the disciplinary dismissal constituted an abuse of the right to discipline.
Therefore, the judgment below did not commit the illegality alleged in the argument, and the argument is merely based on a misunderstanding of the purport of the judgment below. Furthermore, even though the Defendant argued that the Plaintiff's conduct related to the bus operation suspension incident fell under Article 13, Item 3 of the Rules of Employment (departure from the workplace without justifiable cause), which prescribes grounds for dismissal, the fact that the court below did not rule on this point and instead determined only that it fell under Article 57, Item 11 of the Rules of Employment (having adversely affected the company through an illegal assembly) cannot be considered an error affecting the outcome of the judgment. This argument is without merit.
2. Upon examining the reasoning of the judgment below, it is clear that, with regard to the Plaintiff's act of causing a traffic accident on June 27, 1989 and submitting a written statement of explanation to the Defendant, the court below did not rule that this could not constitute a ground for discipline in itself due to the provisions of Article 30 of the Collective Agreement. Rather, after finding that this fell under Article 57, Item 13 of the Defendant's Rules of Employment (a person who has submitted a written statement of explanation three or more times) and Item 1 (a person who has violated these Rules multiple times), which set forth grounds for discipline, the court below ruled, in light of the degree of the misconduct, that this could not constitute grounds sufficient to warrant dismissal as a disciplinary measure against the Plaintiff. Therefore, the Defendant's argument that the court below misunderstood the purport of the aforementioned Article 30 of the Collective Agreement arises from a failure to accurately understand the judgment below. In addition, the factual findings made by the court below—namely, that in connection with the bus operation suspension incident, the Plaintiff was merely a simple participant rather than the ringleader, and that the traffic accident caused by the Plaintiff did not constitute a serious accident—are acceptable, and it cannot be said that there was any illegality in violation of the rules of evidence as argued. This argument is without merit.
For the reasons stated above, the appeal is dismissed, and the costs of the appeal are to be borne by the losing party. This judgment is rendered as stated in the Order by the unanimous opinion of the participating Justices.
Justice Yoon Young-chul (Presiding Justice), Park Woo-dong, Kim Sang-won, Park Man-ho