I certainly hear a lot of US crews advising ATC they'll need to ask their dispatcher what to do next.
That's not necessarily a problem. If safety is an issue, the flight deck does what is necessary and that's what I'd expect. In the world as run by beancounters, if it's a commercial consideration, as in "where would you like me to fly this perfectly serviceable aircraft?" I can see that consulting is likely to be less career limiting.
In the case of this A380 incident, I would assume that the discussion would include the relative cost of (a) dumping fuel and returning to departure point, fixing the aircraft and paying hotel costs for passengers and (b) having to do that somewhere downstream at short notice where the airline might not have a convenient office to handle it, and how likely (b) might be compared to getting the aircraft home on 3.