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United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Shah Princes Hotel v Lain [1993] UKEAT 312_92_0803 (8 March 1993)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1993/312_92_0803.html
Cite as: [1993] UKEAT 312_92_803, [1993] UKEAT 312_92_0803
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I N T E R N A L
At the Tribunal
HIS HONOUR JUDGE B HARGROVE OBE QC
MRS T MARSLAND
MISS A P VALE
Transcript of Proceedings
JUDGMENT
PRELIMINARY HEARING
Revised
APPEARANCES
For the Appellant MR J RAMSDEN
(OF COUNSEL)
Messrs Fowler Holloway & Yates
11 Prince Albert Street
Brighton
East Sussex BN1 1JH
JUDGE HARGROVE OBE QC: The question for the Tribunal in this case was whether the dismissal of the Respondent, a night porter, was fair. The dismissal had been on the grounds of gross misconduct.
The difficulty which arose was that there was a prohibition in the staff handbook against the drinking of alcohol and Mr Ramsden has emphasised this matter to us this morning in submissions (which if I may say so were succinct, to the point and in every way entirely admirable), that in fact Mr Lain would have been in charge of the entire hotel to deal with matters in cases of emergency. The Tribunal accepted that not only had there been that prohibition and that they rejected Mr Lain's denial that he was unaware of the prohibition, they also held that that practice was relaxed by the managers. In particular Mr Atkins had allowed and even encouraged drinking in moderation by Mr Lain with the customers.
The result of that is that unless that decision was perverse the remainder of the grounds of appeal here are on extremely flimsy ground. In our view there was sufficient evidence upon which the Tribunal was entitled to come to that conclusion and therefore their further conclusion, that although Mr Shah believed honestly that the Applicant had been guilty of heavy drinking, that was not a conclusion which had been formed upon reasonable grounds and after proper investigation was one the Tribunal was entitled to reach. It seems to us that that, again, is a decision of fact upon which the Tribunal had sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion.
Accordingly we regret to say that this is not a case in which there is any arguable point and no further steps should be taken upon this appeal.