England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
CIVIL DIVISION
ON APPEAL FROM THE EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL

		The Royal Courts of Justice The Strand London Friday 21 December 2001

Friday 21 December 2001

1. LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY: This application has already once been adjourned. Today Mr Okponobi, in spite of receiving notice, does not appear. I do not propose to further adjourn the matter. I propose to dismiss his application for permission to appeal and I shall give my reasons very briefly for doing so.
2. This is a renewed application for permission to appeal from the Employment Appeal Tribunal, presided over in this instance by Mrs Recorder Laura Cox QC. On a preliminary hearing (that is to say, a hearing at which only Mr Okponobi was invited to attend) the EAT dismissed all but one of his grounds for appealing from an Employment Tribunal decision.
3. Mr Okponobi had been a shop manager who was finally dismissed for taking two weeks' unauthorised leave after two written warnings about his conduct. He complained not only about his dismissal but about race discrimination and sex discrimination in relation, first of all, to a woman employee whose complaint of harassment he said was more fully investigated than Mr Okponobi's complaint had been and, secondly, discrimination by the third respondent, Mrs Smith, who, it was alleged, had allowed a female employee's appeal against dismissal for misconduct which was worse than Mr Okponobi's. He claimed also that he had been worse treated on racial grounds than a fellow-employee, Mr Jawad.
4. The Employment Appeal Tribunal allowed the appeal to proceed on the single ground that the Employment Tribunal might have overlooked a complaint of victimisation arising out of the way in which the third respondent had heard Mr Okponobi's appeal. But as to discrimination and unfair dismissal the Employment Tribunal had made findings which were unequivocal, factually based and unappealable. They are to be found in summary in paragraphs 33-36 inclusive of the tribunal's reasons.
5. It is said by Mr Okponobi that on some or all of these scores the EAT should not have brought his appeal to a premature end but allowed it to go to a full hearing because it was perfectly arguable. The Employment Appeal Tribunal, in a lucidly reasoned decision, took a contrary view. I refer in particular to paragraphs 37-9 of the decision but, more importantly, to the whole of it as showing not only that the EAT had very good grasp of what the issues were which Mr Okponobi wanted to raise, but were clearly right in holding that there was nothing appealable in any of them. Their decision was an entirely proper one.
6. In these circumstances there is no ground upon which to grant Mr Okponobi permission to appeal against those elements of the EAT's decision adverse to him, and his application is dismissed.
ORDER: Application refused