Dismissal on Health Grounds Held Invalid – Success of our law firm in the Kaiserslautern Labour Court

Arbeitsgericht Kaiserslautern (Kaiserslautern Labour Court), judgment of 8 July 2026 – anonymised case report

What is a dismissal for reasons relating to the person?

When an employer dismisses an employee on „personal grounds“ (personenbedingte Kündigung), it is not alleging misconduct. It is arguing that the employee is permanently unable to perform the contractual work for reasons inherent in their person. The most common variant is dismissal on health grounds.

In simplified terms, the labour courts examine three stages: are substantial absences to be expected in future (negative health prognosis)? Do they significantly impair the employer’s business interests? And does the employer’s interest in termination outweigh the employee’s interest in keeping the job? Overarching all of this is the principle of proportionality: if a less severe measure than dismissal is available, the dismissal is invalid. That is precisely where the dismissal in our case failed.

The case:

Our client, a 57-year-old production employee at the time of dismissal, had worked for an international industrial group since 2007. His commute was 100 kilometres each way – roughly 200 kilometres and two and a half hours on the road every working day. Over several years he accrued absences attributable overwhelmingly to exhaustion, fatigue and sleep disorders. In March 2026 the employer dismissed him.

The decision

The court set the dismissal aside as disproportionate and therefore socially unjustified. The decisive point was the company integration management procedure (betriebliches Eingliederungsmanagement, bEM):

The invitation letter was defective. The employer had indeed invited the employee to a bEM, but had not informed him that one of its purposes is to preserve the job – in other words, to avoid dismissal. That information is expressly required by section 167(2) sentence 4 SGB IX. The fact that our client had declined to participate therefore did not help the employer: an employer who fails to issue a proper invitation cannot rely on the refusal. Nor can general workplace information about the bEM – training sessions, leaflets, works meetings – replace the individual notice owed to the employee concerned.

The consequence: an extended burden of pleading. The employer now had to establish that a properly conducted bEM would have been objectively futile. It failed to do so. It had not shown that no site closer to the employee’s home existed – even though the employment contract contained a broad mobility clause permitting a unilateral transfer. Nor had it made plausible why a reduction in working hours would have achieved nothing. The court did the arithmetic: spreading a 20 per cent reduced schedule over four days saves 2.5 hours of commuting per week and adds a further day of recovery. Finally, there was no submission at all as to why rehabilitation benefits would have been unavailable.

The alleged defects in the works council consultation no longer required a decision.

What the case illustrates

Dismissals on health grounds frequently fail in practice – often not because of the illness but because of the procedure. A bEM invitation letter is no mere formality: where the required information on objectives and data use is missing, the burden of pleading shifts to the employer’s detriment (Federal Labour Court, judgments of 15 December 2022 – 2 AZR 162/22; 18 November 2021 – 2 AZR 138/21; 20 November 2014 – 2 AZR 755/13; 24 March 2011 – 2 AZR 170/10).

Important for those affected: a claim must be filed within three weeks of receiving the dismissal (section 4 KSchG). After that the dismissal is deemed valid, however defective it may have been.

How we can help

As a specialist lawyer for employment law (Fachanwältin für Arbeitsrecht), I represent employees in unfair dismissal proceedings. Legal expenses insurance frequently covers the costs. Please feel free to get in touch.

All details have been anonymised. This report concerns an individual case, does not constitute legal advice and is no assurance of a comparable outcome.