United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	THE APPELLANT IN PERSON
For the Respondents	NO ATTENDANCE BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE RESPONDENTS


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): There are three appeals against three interlocutory decisions of an Industrial Tribunal in the course of preparation for a case which is brought by Mr Doleh against his former employers, making allegations of race discrimination.

The interlocutory appeals may be summarised in this way. The first appeal is against the decision of an Industrial Tribunal who excluded questions from the employee's race relations questionnaire, and he says that they should not have excluded those questions, and that he is going to be handicapped in the preparation of his case as a result of their exclusion. The second appeal relates to their refusal to order his employers to provide further and better particulars of the respondent's answer contained in their IT3. The employee says that, as a result of the failure by the tribunal to make that order, he is not going to be properly prepared to deal with the employer's case at the hearing. The third appeal, which is first in our papers, is that the Industrial Tribunal should not have listed the case for a hearing, because, as he put it, "my case is not ready to be listed". That I think is because he takes the view that there is still some further documentary work to be done of the sort raised by the other two Notices of Appeal.

Mr Doleh is in the unfortunate position of every litigant acting for himself, where he perceives that he has difficulties in presenting his case, and is concerned about what is going to happen at the Industrial Tribunal. He says on the one hand, that he can prove what he is alleging against his employers, but on the other hand, he is concerned that his employers will put forward facts with which he will not be able to deal. He says that there is, so to speak, a bias in the way in which the cases are put together before it starts, and that he is concerned that if the case goes ahead he may find himself fighting a battle which he is not prepared to deal with.

It seems to us that the way we should approach interlocutory decisions is that there is only a point of law in the appeals against them if we are satisfied that the tribunal Chairman has either failed to exercise his discretion, or has exercised his discretion on wrong principles, or has exercised his discretion in a way which is perverse. It is obvious in preparing a case for trial, that the Industrial Tribunal Chairman has a wide discretion as to what interlocutory orders should be made, and he and not this Court is best placed to make that judgment.

In this case we have no reason to believe that the Industrial Tribunal Chairman's decisions on these three matters was other than one which fell within the ambit of his discretion. That said, the Industrial Tribunal will no doubt, when the case comes on for hearing, pay careful attention to any submission which is made to them by Mr Doleh that he is not in a position to deal with any evidence which is adduced by the employer, and will pay careful attention to any application he may make that the proceedings be adjourned. On the other hand, it is desirable, as it seems to us, given Mr Doleh's state of mind in particular, that this matter should come on for hearing as soon as is reasonably practicable, so that the issues between the parties can be heard and determined, and Mr Doleh can have an opportunity of proving that which he strongly believes he can prove, which will be to the detriment of his employers.

In these circumstances we shall dismiss these appeals because, in our view, they do not raise any point which we can deal with. We are satisfied that the orders made by the Industrial Tribunal were ones which were made competently.