The Cologne Labour Court (judgement of 23.03.2022, ref: 18 Ca 6830/21) considered the summary dismissal of an employee for presenting a forged vaccination card to be effective.
1. the facts
The plaintiff employee worked for the defendant company, inter alia, as a customer service representative. The clients also included nursing homes. In October 2021, the company informed all employees that from November 2021, only fully vaccinated employees would be allowed to attend customer appointments on site. The plaintiff employee then claimed to the company that she was fully vaccinated. She submitted a vaccination card in December 2021 to confirm this.
During a subsequent check, the employer found that the vaccination card must be a forgery. The batches mentioned in the card were only used on the market later. The company issued an extraordinary dismissal. The employee defended herself against this with an action for protection against dismissal.
The Cologne Labour Court dismissed the action and considered the dismissal to be effective.
2. the decision
In the opinion of the Cologne Labour Court, the extraordinary dismissal was justified by an important reason. This was because the plaintiff had not been able to refute the accusation of falsifying the vaccination card.
Falsifying the vaccination card was not only a minor breach of duty. Rather, the plaintiff employee had violated her duties under her employment contract in a significant way by violating the 2-G rule. In addition, she had severely disrupted the relationship of trust. This constituted an important reason within the meaning of section 626 (1) BGB.
There were also no data protection considerations that prevented the court from using the defendant's arguments. Based on § 28b para. 3 IfSG (old version), the company was also entitled to compare the data with the publicly available batch data. Only in this way was the defendant able to reliably verify the existence of complete vaccination protection due to the lack of a QR code.
3. conclusion
The decision is understandable. Due to the violation of the Rule of 2 associated with the falsification and the resulting potential endangerment of customers, the classification of this violation as good cause within the meaning of Section 626 (1) of the German Civil Code (BGB) appears to be correct.
