I have a hard time believing that a court would always "merrily" rule in favour of the employee in a situation as described above. Do you have a bunch of court-rulings that you base this comment on? Would be interesting if you could share those with us. I always feel quite insecure in this type of situations and would really appreciate some hard facts for the next time I have an issue like this.

It was my belief that the courts normally rule 50/50, i.e. in a case of instant dismissal with some (allbeit disputable) grounds, the emplyee would end up having to pay half of the contractual notice period e.g. Or if the dispute is the 10 days absence, the employee would end up having to pay 5 days and the employee 5. Are you saying that this belief is totally wrong?