Single Catastrophic Mistake Can Justify Dismissal

The commander of a British nuclear submarine who ran his vessel aground on a large rock and was later court martialed as a result provides a good reminder that, in some circumstances, a single catastrophic mistake can be enough to justify dismissal .

The case stems from an incident in May 2008 in which Commander Steve Drysdale crashed the submarine HMS Superb into a large rock in the Red Sea. He admitted, along with two of his officers, to misreading the depth of the rock as 732 metres when in reality it was only 132 metres down. It was this mistake that led to the accident.

The case mirrors the more well-known case of Taylor v Alidair Ltd, in which a pilot was dismissed after making a single bad landing. In this case, the court of appeal found that since the degree of professional skill required by a pilot was so high, and since the consequences of deviating from those high standards could be so serious, one failure to uphold those standards was enough