United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

BAILII case number: [1995] UKEAT 28_95_0505

Appeal No. EAT/28/95

EMPOLYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL

58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

At the Tribunal

On 5 May 1995

Before

HIS HONOUR JUDGE J HULL QC

MR T S BATHO

MRS E HART

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MR D BURKE          APPELLANT

MENCAP          RESPONDENTS

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Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

PRELIMINARY HEARING

Revised


 


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APPEARANCES

For the Appellant NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT


 


JUDGE HULL QC: Mr Burke is a Solicitor and he was employed by the well known charity Mencap beginning in October 1990.

There was some reorganisation in Mencap, particularly referring to legal services, and on 18 April 1993 Mr Burke, as a result of this reorganisation, lost his job. He presented his application to the Industrial Tribunal complaining that he had been unfairly selected for redundancy and claiming compensation on that basis. The reply in form IT3 was that it was redundancy and that the employers had not acted unfairly.

On 15 September 1994 the Industrial Tribunal sat under the chairmanship of Lt Col

D W H Brayden, with his two industrial members, and on that occasion Mr Burke did not turn up. It was suggested that he was unfit.

The Tribunal (I will not go into the details) found that there was, in their view, no excuse and it is quite clear indeed that they found it not a genuine situation of inability to attend. The day before he had been actively preparing for the case, the medical certificate gave no particulars of his alleged illness and so forth.

They found that it was a vexatious thing that he had not attended. They dismissed his application, he not having attended and they having heard nothing therefore in support of it, and they awarded £500 costs under the undoubted jurisdiction to do so, taking the view that this was unreasonable of him.

They promulgated their decision on 30 September. They refused a review of that decision on 25 October and Mr Burke now seeks to appeal to us. The case is in our list under our Practice Direction to see whether we can discover any point of law.

Mr Burke does not attend today. He makes a number of criticisms in his Notice of Appeal which appear to us to be criticisms raising points of fact rather than law, and we have received a letter from Solicitors, Clifford Watts, Compton, suggesting that Mr Burke will not attend:

"Mr Burke has not told us where he lives as he is evading service of proceedings and we are accordingly returning your letter".

They are acting as agent for the Law Society who have intervened, apparently, in Mr Burke's practice.

In all those circumstances, all we need to do is to say that we can find no point of law here; no arguable point; and in the circumstances, this appeal will be dismissed today.