United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	APPELLANT IN PERSON
For the Respondent


 


MR JUSTICE WOOD (PRESIDENT): This is an Appeal by Mr Doyle who acts in person from an Industrial Tribunal sitting in London (North) under the Chairmanship of Mrs Fiona Stoll who sat for three days, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd June 1988 to hear an allegation by Mr Doyle that he had been unfairly dismissed by his employers the London Borough of Hackney. His application was dismissed and he appeals.

He was represented by Counsel and Solicitors before the Tribunal.

He came before this Court in May 1989 and asked for an adjournment because he wished to obtain other documents and place them before us. This he has now been able to do.

Mr Doyle was employed as a Heating and Ventilation Fitter by the London Borough of Hackney; his employment commenced on the 28th April 1980; he was dismissed on the 14th May 1987. The reason for his dismissal was his persistent intermittent absences, capability.

The Tribunal saw and heard a number of witnesses, Mr Doyle and several from the Respondents. They found all the witnesses for the Respondents were acceptable, sincere, careful, unbiased and anxious to give the Applicant the benefit of the doubt; they clearly preferred the evidence from the employers. The Tribunal also found that the procedure had been carried out faultlessly, that Mr Louisy, who was the Mechanical Superintendent, had gone out of his way to be helpful and to give the Applicant every advantage and that his superior, Mr Robertson was most impressive.

The Tribunal therefore rejected any sense of grievance that the Applicant might have had. They found themselves convinced that the Applicant's absences had an adverse effect on day to day arrangements which Mr Louisy had to make to carry out the maintenance requirements of the Housing Department and they accepted that persistent intermittent absences have a far more disruptive effect on the smooth running of any organisation than do long term absences. They found it a sad case. Mr Doyle was an intelligent man, but they found that every possible opportunity had been given so that he should know the criticisms levelled at him and to try to improve his record. They end that particular paragraph with this phrase:

"We are satisfied that the figures for the applicant's absence were not falsified and the fact that at no stage did the applicant ever say that he was not being paid for the days that he worked is a clear indication to us that such allegations of falsification as he makes are not justified."

The grounds upon which Mr Doyle now presents his appeal before us is that he, through his Counsel, applied for an adjournment on the 1st June 1988 and was refused it. He said "that was an injustice". His Notice of Appeal which was prepared by himself said that the question of law upon which he wished to appeal was:

"Pre-trial prejudices"

and he said that:

"the evidence was misinterpreted".

The history which he now presents from the documentation, which we have read with care, is that he instructed a Solicitor and Counsel at least as early as the beginning of 1988; that there had been an earlier date fixed in February and in April of that year; that he, Mr Doyle, had been most anxious that documentation should be obtained from his employers and that steps should be taken to enforce the production of that documentation and to enforce the attendance of various witnesses.

The Tribunal set aside at least one Witness Order. Solicitors and Barristers turned up for the hearing on the 1st June. Mr Doyle was insistent that all the witnesses he wanted were not there and that there were other documents which would have led to a different result. The application was made for an adjournment and was refused. Mr Doyle has been in conflict with his Solicitors over proceedings where they sued for their fees and he is suggesting that they did not carry out their function properly and were negligent but we have not seen all those proceedings and we only surmise from the documentation that that is what has happened. He returns in front of us to argue that the adjournment should have been granted and the result of failing to grant the adjournment was that there was an absence of justice in his case.

The Tribunal in looking at the history of the matter, and of course it was in connection with the history that the documentation was required because of these absences, pointed out that from September 1985 there had been at least three occasions when the problems of absenteeism had been brought to Mr Doyle's notice. They mentioned in paragraph 2 of the Decision that the first complaint made against him was on the 26th September 1985. They look at a copy of that notice and examine that situation. On that occasion he was given a severe reprimand and a final warning. The second notice was in April 1986 and the third one was in June 1986. He was warned on each of those occasions and in fact warned that ultimately there would have to come a time when a more serious step was taken than the mere warning and cautioning and that in fact came about. He was dismissed, there was an appeal, and the decision to dismiss was upheld. The Tribunal looked at the whole situation, applied the law. We can find no error of law in the Decision nor is one suggested by Mr Doyle. His sole point is that there should have been an adjournment and that because there was no adjournment he therefore suffered an injustice. In our judgment there was nothing to indicate that the discretion, which was a wide discretion, exercised by the Tribunal was wrongly exercised or that the decision not to adjourn was not within the discretion which they could exercise.

Mr Doyle's real complaint, if he has any at all, is against his Solicitor and his Barrister. We see that he has in fact been in touch at least with the Law Society. In the circumstances, we find no error of law in this Decision and we cannot help him if there is no error of law. That perhaps is not something he fully realises, but let me assure him, on behalf of all three of us sitting here, that unless there is an error of law we are unable to help and there is no error of law that we can discern. I am afraid therefore that this Appeal must be dismissed at this juncture.