United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

BAILII case number: [1996] UKEAT 381_95_1706

Appeal No. EAT/381/95

EMPOLYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL

58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

At the Tribunal

On 17 June 1996

HIS HONOUR JUDGE J ALTMAN

MRS R CHAPMAN

MR D A C LAMBERT

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MRS K A O'HORA          APPELLANT

TULIP INTERNATIONAL (UK) BACON DIVISION LTD          RESPONDENTS

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Transcript of Proceedings

INTERLOCUTORY JUDGMENT

Revised


 


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APPEARANCES

For the Appellant MR J EVAN JONES

(of Counsel)

Messrs Metcalfe

Copeman & Pettefar

Solicitors

Cage Lane

Thetford

Norfolk

IP24 2DT

For the Respondents MR W HANSEN

(of Counsel)

Stuart Showell

Solicitor

Legal Protection Group

Marshall's Court

Marshall's Road

Sutton

Surrey

SM1 4DU


 


JUDGE J ALTMAN: We have considered the application by the Appellant to amend the Notice of Appeal in accordance with the proposed paragraph 7, set out in the Written Submissions for the Appellant in Response by Mr Evan Jones of 7 March 1996. It arises at this point because the Tribunal, during the course of its deliberation, in fact having reserved its decision, considered that there may be a point of law in relation to the extent to which the Tribunal applied the statute to the issues before it, and therefore invited the parties to make further representations.

In the ordinary course of events, where the Employment Appeal Tribunal retires to reach a decision on the day of the hearing before it, this will all have been dealt with and embraced one way or the other within the course of the day. But as this was during the deliberations of the reserved decision, sadly the whole process has become attenuated.

On behalf of the Respondents, Mr Hansen submitted that, at this point in response to a matter raised by the Employment Appeal Tribunal itself, it would be wrong for the Appellant to be permitted to amend and argue on a point that was not dealt with at the original appeal.

This Tribunal's approach went no further than seeing (what seemed to us) a possible argument and wishing the parties to have an opportunity to consider it rather than simply putting it from our minds. We have no commitment to the argument one way or the other and will, at all times, base our decisions solely upon the submissions and arguments that are placed before us.

Mr Hansen has argued that this ground should not be allowed because of the timing and the way in which it arose and secondly, because he submits that it does not give rise to an arguable point of law. He does not argue any particular prejudice in relation to his clients about the process upon which the Appellant seeks to be engaged.

We give our decision on this at this stage in order to assist the parties and hopefully bring these matters to a conclusion. We have decided to allow the amendment. It seems to us, on the face of it, in the context of this case, that it does give rise to an arguable point of law.

Mr Hansen suggests that it is implicit in the Tribunal decision that they considered, when addressing the reason for dismissal, the competing argument of the Appellant, that the reason was not redundancy but (to use a shorthand version) the Appellant was being treated as "a scapegoat". Mr Evan Jones, on behalf of the Appellant, submits that it is not implicit and that the wording indeed, of the Tribunal decision, in so far as it indicates what was in their minds, suggests that they treated it as irrelevant and came to the view that the reason for dismissal was redundancy because there was a redundancy situation. He also, in the grounds of appeal, argues that in any event, the Tribunal did not state its decision or reasoning or set out matters upon from which that could be confidently inferred.

Those, on the face of the arguments, seem to us to be issues of law in the context of this case. We allow the amendments for the purpose of the appeal.

Generally the Employment Appeal Tribunal will not allow an amendment at this late stage, and we recognise the force of Mr Hansen's submissions in this context. However when we adjourned to consider our reserved decision and in discussions between us, the way the dual arguments were presented to us, namely whether there was a redundancy situation and whether there was evidence to support the finding that the reason for dismissal was redundancy, raised in our minds a closely related but arguably separate issue which had not been addressed before us as a separate issue. This related to the way in which the Industrial Tribunal approached the issue of the reason for dismissal. In spite of the stage of the proceedings that had been reached this seemed so inextricably connected with the matters we were discussing, we considered that the right course was to go no further until we had acquainted the parties with this matter and given them an opportunity to make any representations they wished. Accordingly a letter was written by me to the parties' representatives giving such an opportunity. We have then proceeded to deal with the arguments presented to us on their merits.

We recognise that there must be an end to litigation and that this application has been made at a late stage. We have balanced that against the absence of any specific prejudice beyond the re-opening of argument and the manifest justice in this case of dealing, if practicable, with all relevant issues. We have reached the judgment in this case that we should allow the amendment and invite further argument.

Because the notice of appeal raises an arguable point of law does not, of course, mean to say, when actually looking at the decision itself and hearing the full arguments, we would come to the same conclusion that there was an error of law on the part of the Tribunal. That is a wholly different issue it seems to us which we must now address, although many of the arguments we have heard already this morning will go to that specific issue.