Official Fired for Bullying Colleagues: Lower Courts Backed Her, But the Supreme Court Had the Final Word

The Supreme Court of the Czech Republic has ruled that the immediate dismissal of a public prosecutor's office employee was lawful. The woman was fired in the summer of 2024 for creating a hostile work environment and bullying her colleagues.

According to her employer, the woman refused to greet coworkers, tried to control colleagues who did not report to her at all, and publicly called some of them "human filth and trash." Because of her behaviour, colleagues reportedly began seriously considering quitting, and some even linked their health problems to her conduct.

Prosecutors themselves apparently didn't escape her comments either — according to the documents, she described them to others as "stupid, incompetent, arrogant and haughty." She was also said to have taken advantage of her good standing with the head of the department.

The dismissed employee challenged the decision in court, arguing that none of the cited reasons justified immediate termination of her employment contract. She insisted she had never behaved the way she was described, and accused her employer of failing to specify concrete incidents, dates or the names of the colleagues allegedly affected in the dismissal letter.

Prague courts sided with her and overturned the dismissal. Their rulings held that if an employer resorts to such a drastic measure as immediate termination, the grounds must be spelled out specifically enough for the employee to be able to mount an effective defence.

The prosecutor's office, however, appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the woman's conduct had been described with sufficient precision and that she herself clearly understood what she was being accused of. No law, it argued, requires an employer to list a misconduct complete with exact dates and the names of every person involved.

A Supreme Court panel chaired by Jiří Doležílek sided with the prosecutor's office. According to the court, the employer was not obliged to specify exactly when the incidents occurred, under what circumstances, whether during or after working hours, against which specific employees, or how many times — even without these details, there was no doubt as to the true reasons for the dismissal.

As the Supreme Court explained in its ruling, published on the official notice board, an immediate dismissal could only be deemed unlawful if it were fundamentally impossible to establish the actual reason for the termination. The case has now been sent back for further review, and the court of first instance will be bound by the Supreme Court's position.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz