gross misconduct

noun · wichtiger Grund

Wichtiger Grund for the gross misconduct that justifies summary dismissal, § 626 Abs. 1 BGB, but the German version runs on a clock the English term hides, § 626 Abs. 2 BGB gives the employer two weeks from learning the facts to dismiss, and after that only ordinary notice remains. Grober Fehler or schweres Fehlverhalten describes the conduct but names no legal ground.

Which translation, when

wichtiger Grundthe ground for summary dismissal, facts making continued employment unreasonable until the notice period ends, § 626 Abs. 1 BGB, weighed against all the circumstances.

Zwei-Wochen-Fristthe trap the English term does not carry, the extraordinary dismissal must be declared within two weeks of the employer learning the facts, § 626 Abs. 2 BGB, or the right to dismiss on that ground lapses.

Why

Gross misconduct in English is a description of the employee’s behaviour that unlocks summary dismissal, and German law turns it into a defined ground bounded by a deadline. Summary dismissal is the außerordentliche or fristlose Kündigung, and it needs a wichtiger Grund, § 626 Abs. 1 BGB, facts that make it unreasonable, unzumutbar, for the employer to keep the employee even until the ordinary notice period expires, judged on the whole picture and usually, for behavioural grounds, only after an Abmahnung has put the employee on notice. The feature the English term never signals is § 626 Abs. 2 BGB, a two-week Ausschlussfrist, the employer must declare the extraordinary dismissal within two weeks of learning the facts that ground it, and once that window closes the wichtiger Grund is spent, leaving at most an ordinary dismissal. So a client who investigates for a month before acting, natural under English practice, may have destroyed the summary dismissal by delay alone. The reflex grober Fehler or schweres Fehlverhalten paints the conduct but carries neither the unzumutbar threshold nor the clock, and gross misconduct is a wichtiger Grund only for as long as the two weeks run.

Typical mistakes

A summary dismissal must be declared within two weeks of the employer learning the facts, § 626 Abs. 2 BGB, so a gross-misconduct dismissal translated without the clock can lapse while the employer investigates.
Behavioural grounds usually require a prior Abmahnung, so treating any serious breach as instantly dismissible skips the warning German law generally expects before an extraordinary dismissal.
Grober Fehler or schweres Fehlverhalten describes conduct without naming the ground, so the legal test, an unzumutbar continuation, § 626 Abs. 1 BGB, must not be lost in a phrase about behaviour.

What matters

Summary-dismissal decisions meet a deadline: a wichtiger Grund under § 626 Abs. 1 BGB unlocks instant dismissal, but § 626 Abs. 2 BGB gives only two weeks from discovery to act, and behavioural cases usually need a prior Abmahnung. The employer who spends a month building the gross-misconduct case has let the two-week window close and kept only an ordinary dismissal.

Authority

§ 626 Abs. 1 BGB
§ 626 Abs. 2 BGB

What the machine misses

Gross misconduct comes back as grober Fehler or schweres Fehlverhalten in machine output, describing the behaviour but naming no legal ground, when German summary dismissal turns on a wichtiger Grund, § 626 Abs. 1 BGB, an unzumutbar continuation of the employment. The machine also carries nothing of § 626 Abs. 2 BGB, the two-week Ausschlussfrist, so a translated gross-misconduct dismissal reads as available whenever the employer chooses, when in German law the right to dismiss on that ground expires two weeks after the facts come to light.

See what the machine does with this clause →

Examples

dismissal for gross misconduct	die fristlose Kündigung aus wichtigem Grund
to dismiss summarily	fristlos kündigen
good cause for termination	der wichtige Grund
without prior warning	ohne vorherige Abmahnung