England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

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

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Thursday, 7th February 2002

1. LORD JUSTICE MUMMERY: This is an application by Mr Lawal in person for the reinstatement of his application for permission to appeal to this court from the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal. The Employment Appeal Tribunal decided, on 10th September 2001, to dismiss Mr Lawal's appeal against orders of the Employment Tribunal which required him to pay a £150 deposit to be allowed to continue his claim against Tricia Foster and the Chesterfield Law Centre, and against the order of the Employment Tribunal striking out his claim for a failure to pay the deposit.
2. When the application for permission to appeal was listed for hearing on 20th November 2001 Mr Lawal did not appear and was not represented. I therefore proceeded, in the circumstances set out in the transcript of the judgment, to deal with Mr Lawal's application on the papers and, for the reasons summarised there, I refused permission to appeal.
3. Mr Lawal then submitted an application, which is described as an application to appeal my order, but in fact has been correctly treated as an application to reinstate his permission to appeal application. In his grounds for seeking to reinstate he says, that the order striking out his claim was not, on its face, entered in the register of decisions of Employment Tribunals in accordance with R v Secretary of State of the Central Office of the Employment Tribunals (England and Wales), ex parte Public Concern at Work 19th April, 2000, a decision of Jackson J allowing an application for judicial review. He summarised, in his oral submissions this morning, the reason why it is important for decisions to be entered on the register. He criticises my judgment and that of Mr Langstaff QC who gave the judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissing his appeal.
4. He also refers in his application to his constitutional right of access to justice. He cited a case of R v Lord Chancellor, ex parte Witham [1997] TLR 128. So he contends that an unlawful act is being done to him in violation of his human rights and the order which has been made is ultra vires. These points were developed helpfully by Mr Lawal in his arguments this morning. In the light of those arguments I have to ask myself the same question as I addressed in the judgment of 20th November 2001 ^^: that is whether this appeal has a real prospect of success. As I pointed out there, the appeal which Mr Lawal is seeking to bring is against the exercise of a discretion which the Employment Tribunal have to order the payment of deposits as a term of allowing a claim to proceed and a further discretion of striking out proceedings if their orders are not complied with.
5. In my view the points which Mr Lawal has made in his application regarding the non-entry in the registrar of the the order striking out his proceedings, and the other points relating to access to justice and violation of human rights, do not bear on the question whether he has a realistic prospect of succeeding in his appeal against the substantive decision in exercise of the Employment Tribunal's discretion. Even if he is right on the points which I have summarised, it does not follow that his appeal would succeed. Mistakes can be made by Employment Tribunals, just as they can by other courts or anybody else, but it does not follow that, because a mistake has been made, the decision is likely to be any different.
6. In my view the substance of the appeal is that the Tribunal should not have struck out the claim for non-payment of the deposit of £150. My view still is that an appeal against that decision has no real prospect of succeeding because it cannot be shown, on the material in the papers before me, or in anything that Mr Lawal has said, that the Tribunal exercised their discretion improperly. That means without applying the correct legal principles, without taking into account relevant factors, or by taking into account irrelevant factors.
7. In brief, the decision was one which the Tribunal was entitled to come to. This court would not interfere with that decision. In those circumstances I have no doubt that Mr Lawal will be disappointed with this decision, but in my view the application to reinstate should be refused.