In the dismissal letter it is not necessary to justify whether the dismissal is reasonable; in the trial the company will have to prove that there are actually causes that justify the dismissal.

The appeal for the unification of doctrine filed by the company is resolved, against the ruling of May 24, 2021 of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (rec. Suplicación 278/2021), which resolved the appeal filed by the worker, Mr. Máximo, against the ruling of the Social Court No. 42 of Madrid dated February 8, 2021 (records 663/2020), dismissal procedure.

Mr. Máximo, who had been serving as manager since 2005, was dismissed on March 6, 2020 for economic and organizational reasons. In the dismissal letter, the company alleged economic losses in the years 2017 to 2019 and compensated him with €42,442.66, in addition to paying him for the lack of notice.

The Social Court declared the admissibility of the dismissal, considering the content of the dismissal letter to be appropriate, and the economic situation of the company has been proven.   The sentence was appealed by the worker and the TSJ of Madrid partially upheld the appeal, declaring the dismissal unfair., arguing that the content of the letter was insufficient, condemning the company to choose between paying compensation of €78,931.80 or reinstatement and payment of processing salaries.

In the appeal, the company alleged contradiction with a previous ruling of the TSJ of Madrid, dated February 18, 2016 (remedy 1012/2015) and reported violation of articles 53.1. a) and 53.4 of the ET, in relation to art. 55 of the same legal body, as well as the jurisprudence that develops said regulations.

The Prosecutor's Office issued a report in which he considered that the appeal should be declared inadmissible due to lack of contradiction. The worker's legal representation ruled in the same sense in the challenge document.

The question to be resolved consisted of determining whether the letter of dismissal for objective economic reasons complied with the requirement required by art. 53.1 a) of the ET.

The High Court had already solved a similar case in the ruling 802/2023, of October 26 (recourse 506/2022), on a case identical to the present one, which affected another worker in the same business group and raised an identical issue in which the same contrast ruling was invoked.

It is important to note that this ruling indicates that several companies in the group have issued similar dismissal letters in other individual objective dismissals, and that these judicial processes concluded that the content of said letters was insufficient.

The Court, after analyzing the case, reiterates the doctrine of the Chamber and concludes that in this case the dismissal communication contained sufficient information about the causes of the termination of the contract, detailing economic losses and reduction of activity in the worker's line of business. However, the appealed ruling considered this information insufficient, requiring additional details about the "reasonableness" of the dismissal measure.According to the Supreme Court, “ The reasonableness of the extinguishing measure is not an element that configures the content of the extinction letter, but is part of the accreditation of the cause.".

The Supreme Court clarifies that the dismissal letter does not need to justify the reasonableness of the measure; It is sufficient to state the objective causes that justify the dismissal. In this case, it considers that the worker was able to defend himself in court and that the company fulfilled its obligation to justify the causes of termination.

After analyzing the above,the Prosecutor's Office concluded that the appeal should be upheld and that, since no ruling had been made on the existence of the objective causes mentioned in the dismissal letter, the proceedings should be returned to the court of origin to resolve the rest of the reasons formulated by the worker.

Therefore,The Supreme Court upheld the appeal, dismissed and annulled the sentence, returning the case to the Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid to analyze the other reasons alleged by the plaintiff..