McDonnell v Minister for Education

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 03 June 1940
• Date: 03 June 1940
• Court: Supreme Court

Supreme Court.

McDonnell v. Minister for Education.

MARGARET McDONNELL

and

THE MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND ANOTHER (1)

Education - Contract of service - Professor of Science employed by Minister for Education - Whether contract for one year or for indefinite period - Termination of contract - Length of notice necessary - Whether notice must terminate at a particular time.

Appeal from an order of O'Byrne J. on the trial of the action without a jury.

The facts have been summarised in the headnote, and are fully set out in the judgment of Sullivan C.J.

M. G. had been employed for some years in a teachers' training college controlled by the Minister for Education in the post of Professor of Science at a certain annual salary, rising by increments each year to a prescribed maximum figure. In the month of December, 1936, she married. It was intimated to her by the Department of Education shortly afterwards that she would be required to vacate her post, and on 15th April, 1937, she was given three months' notice that her services would terminate on 31st July, 1937.

In an action for damages for wrongful dismissal the trial Judge (O'Byrne J.) found that it was an implied term of the contract of employment that it should be terminable on reasonable notice; that in the circumstances the only reasonable time at which the employment should terminate was at the end of the school year, and that any notice of loss than six months, terminating at the end of the school year, was not reasonable or sufficient to terminate the plaintiff's employment, and accordingly the three months' notice given was inoperative. He therefore awarded the plaintiff the sum of £280 damages, representing one year's salary in lieu of notice.

Held by the Supreme Court, on appeal from these findings, that the contract was one for an indefinite period, and not, either expressly or by presumption of law, a contract for one year; that the trial Judge was right in holding that there should be implied in it a provision for its termination, and that, in the absence of any custom or usage proscribing the notice necessary, the employment should be terminable by a reasonable notice; that it was for the Judge to determine as a fact what length of notice was reasonable in the circumstances, and that there was no reason to disturb his finding that any notice of less than six months would not be reasonably, but that he was not entitled to hold that such notice must end at any particular time. Accordingly, the notice given was inoperative and the plaintiff was in the same position as if she had been dismissed without notice, and was therefore entitled to six months' salary in lieu of notice.

Cur. adv. vult.

Sullivan C.J.:—

This is an appeal by the first-named defendant, the Minister for Education, from the judgment in favour of the plaintiff pronounced by O'Byrne J. upon the trial of the action without a jury.

The action was brought to recover damages for wrongful dismissal from the post of Professor of Science in Colaiste Muire, Tourmakeady, to which post the plaintiff had been appointed by the Minister of Education with the sanction of the second-named defendant, the Most Reverend Thomas Gilmartin, Archbishop of Tuam, the Manager of that School. O'Byrne J. held that the plaintiff had been wrongfully dismissed by the Minister and gave judgment against him for £280 damages. The action...