Court Ruling: Termination Possible Due to Violation of Employment Obligation Older Than Three Years

written by Dr. Stjepan Lović, attorney, Law Firm Grubišić & Lović & Lalić

In cases of regular termination of employment contracts conditioned by employee behavior, the employer must first give a warning to the employee and inform them of the possibility of termination in case of continued violation of that obligation, and before terminating the employment contract, must allow them to present their defense. However, the Labor Law does not specify, nor does case law determine, how many of these warnings the employer is obliged to give before terminating the employee’s employment contract, which is often a question employers ask in these cases.

According to the content of the legal provision, the employer is not obliged to formally warn the employee about their obligations from the employment relationship if there are circumstances that make it unreasonable to expect the employer to do so. Case law has shifted the burden of proof regarding the existence of these circumstances onto the employer, so the employer is obliged to prove in every court proceeding that these violations by the employee are circumstances that make it unreasonable to expect the employer to issue a warning to the employee before termination.

Because neither the law nor case law has specified at least some of these justified circumstances, the employer is exposed to an uncertain court decision to accept their claims regarding the existence of these circumstances as valid. All of this causes legal uncertainty and the absurdity that if the court considers differently from the employer, the employer is obliged to reinstate the employee they are dissatisfied with and compensate them for all wages from the moment of termination until their return to the workplace.

Until when is the warning valid

The law does not specify a period during which the warning is valid after which it would be considered that the violation from the warning has not even occurred, so employers are again exposed to legal uncertainty and unpredictability of the outcome of court proceedings. Therefore, it is interesting to point out a recent ruling by the County Court in Zagreb, case no. Gž R-187/2026, rendered on June 30, 2026.

With this ruling, the County Court in Zagreb, in the proceedings to determine the termination as unlawful and to reinstate the employee, rejected the employee’s appeal as unfounded and confirmed the ruling of the Municipal Court in Slavonski Brod, case no. Pr-20/2025-11 from January 23, 2026. This first-instance ruling rejected the employee’s claim to determine that the Decision on the regular termination of the employment contract, by which the employer regularly terminated the employee’s indefinite employment contract, was not permitted. It is essential from these decisions that the employer made the decision to terminate the contract based on two previous warnings for violations of the employee’s work obligations that occurred in 2022 and 2025.

The courts clearly stated that the fact that the employee received a written warning about the obligations of the employment contract more than two years before the last warning does not mean that the violations from that warning should not have been taken into account by the defendant when making the termination decision. In this specific case, therefore, there were justified reasons for the regular termination of the employee’s employment contract due to violations of obligations from the employment relationship. It should be emphasized that in the practice of labor relations, it is becoming increasingly common for collective agreements, work regulations, employment contracts, or other employer acts to specify a period during which the issued warning will be valid.

Everyone to their own

For example, the collective agreement of HEP stipulates that a written warning regarding obligations from the employment relationship ceases to be valid after two years from the date the employee received the warning, while the Basic Collective Agreement for employees in public services stipulates that the employer’s written warning before regular termination of the employment contract conditioned by employee behavior is removed from the records after three years from the date it was delivered to the employee, and upon the expiration of that period, it is considered as if such a warning had never existed.

The employer has the right, but…

It is also common for work regulations established by employers to specify violations for which it is not reasonable to expect the employer to issue a warning to the employee before termination, but it should be emphasized that the fact that the employer has stated in the regulations that a certain violation is ‘particularly serious’ does not automatically mean that the legal obligation for prior warning is excluded in every case. The exception to the obligation to allow the employee to defend themselves must be supported by convincing reasons in court proceedings.

All these issues in labor relations cause extreme uncertainty for the employer and deprive them of the right to freely decide, even according to pre-established criteria known to employees at the time of signing the employment contract and to which they agree at that moment, which employees they will retain and which they will not.