In Edwards v Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust the Court of Appeal held that an employee could, in principle, recover damages for loss of future employment prospects when, as the result of breach of express contractual terms as to the conduct of disciplinary proceedings, findings of misconduct were made (which would not have been made had the disciplinary procedure been properly observed) resulting in dismissal.

The Court of Appeal held that the decisions of the House of Lords in Johnson v Unisys Ltd and Eastwood v Magnox Electric plc; Cornwall County Court v McCabe had both considered circumstances in which employees argued that they had a common law cause of action for breach of the implied term of trust and confidence in connection with the manner of their dismissals, not with the measure of damages for breach of an express term of the employee's contract prior to dismissal. It disagreed with the High Court's suggestion in Botham v Ministry of Defence that the remedy for a wrongful dismissal which occurs as the result of a breach of disciplinary procedures is provided exclusively by the unfair dismissal provisions of the Employment Rights Act 1996.