In Denmark there is still very little case law regarding the use of e-mail as a form of communication between employer and employees. A previous judgment decided that a termination, which had been sent via e-mail to the employee’s work mail after normal office hours on the last day of the month, had not arrived timely.
In the current case, the company had sent the termination on 31 May 2010 at 5.36 pm to the employee’s private e-mail account. The employee did not have a work e-mail account. The employee claimed that she had not read the e-mail until 1 June 2010.
The city court emphasized that the parties had previously corresponded via the employee’s private e-mail account, and previously the employee had newsletters and payslips sent to the account during her employment. Further, the correspondence had previously taken place outside normal office hours, as the employee had sent an e-mail to the employer outside normal office hours twice during her sickness period. The court found that there was no reason to deviate from the starting point in Danish legislation that terminations take effect from the time of arrival, not from the time they are read.
Eversheds still recommend that terminations should be given in due time either in person or by regular mail.
