At the Tribunal
THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE MUMMERY (P)
MRS E HART
MR B M WARMAN
Transcript of Proceedings
JUDGMENT
Revised
APPEARANCES
For the Appellant NO APPEARANCE BY OR REPRESENTATION ON BEHALF OF APPELLANT
For the Respondents NO APPEARANCE BY OR REPRESENTATION ON BEHALF OF RESPONDENTS
MR JUSTICE MUMMERY (PRESIDENT): This is an appeal against the decision of the Industrial Tribunal as long ago as 1991. The Industrial Tribunal held at Southampton heard an application for unfair dismissal brought by Mr D Cross against ADACS Ltd. For reasons notified to the parties on 16 October 1991 the Tribunal unanimously decided that Mr Cross was not unfairly dismissed. He appealed against that decision by a Notice of Appeal dated 25 November 1991, alleging that in certain respects the Industrial Tribunal had erred in law by mis-directing itself and by not taking sufficient account of certain matters.
It is not necessary to discuss any further detail on the matter, in view of subsequent events. The Respondent to the appeal, ADACS Ltd., is in liquidation. A letter has been received from a firm of solicitors, The Coward Partnership in Salisbury, who were notified of the hearing to dispose of this appeal. They wrote to the Tribunal on 14 August 1995 that they had not had any communication with Mr Cross for many months, did not know his whereabouts and were no longer acting on his behalf. They stated that they had sent a copy of the Notice of Hearing to him at his last known address, though they doubted whether it would come to his attention. In those circumstances they confirmed that they would not be attending the hearing today on Mr Cross's behalf. They ask that we might contact Mr Cross at his last known address in Andover. They added by way of information that Mr Cross had been made bankrupt, as well as repeating the point already known to this Tribunal that ADACS had gone into liquidation.
In these circumstances neither side has attended today or been represented. In view of the contents of the letters summarised, the correct way to deal with this matter is to dismiss the appeal for want of prosecution.