United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANTS


 


JUDGE LEVY QC: Mr E Ginn was an employee of the Independent Plywood Company. The time came when he failed to arrive for work. The Company dismissed him. He commenced proceedings in an Industrial Tribunal. The Company in its IT3 said he was off work without giving them notice. He said he had been dismissed when he was ill. There was a hearing before an Industrial Tribunal on 24 June and 2 July 1996. The decision of the Industrial Tribunal was that the Applicant was unfairly dismissed and they assessed the Applicant's contributory fault at 25%.

In model Extended Reasons, the Chairman set out the facts as to the investigation of the employee's absence and came to a conclusion in short that:

"10 ... Mr Whiting's [Managing Director] procedural failures amounted to a complete denial of natural justice to Mr Ginn."

Faced with that decision, the employer wrote a letter dated 9 July 1996 to the Registrar of this Tribunal which it asked should be treated as its grounds of appeal:

"We received the written findings of the tribunal and would like to comment as follows.

It is your prerogative who's evidence you believe, but I feel reading your conclusion, that one point may have escaped your notice.

It is true we are a small company and we have no official contract of employment but in our letter of warning to Mr Ginn on the 14th July 1996 we clearly stated that any further absenteeism would require a certificate. When he finally returned to work he did not have one, and that was one of the reasons for parting company as he was clearly told that at the time.

Paragraph 8 on page three seems to indicate differently. Although we do not have a contract of Employment we made contract in kind with Mr Ginn in our warning letter of the 14th July 1996.

Would you please look into this matter and advise if we have some case for appeal.

We have found business very difficult for the last three years and the figure of £3281.43 awarded against us is a very significant sum."

This matter was issued for a Preliminary Hearing under the procedure as to whether the appeal should go ahead. The Company was given notice of the hearing for today. Nobody had arrived at 10.30 a.m. when it was listed, and enquiries were made of the Company as to their position. We are told the information was that they knew of the hearing but no-one would be able to attend.

We have carefully considered the contents of the letter of 9 July and we have all carefully considered the Decision of the Industrial Tribunal with its Extended Reasons. It is not, of course, our function to advise on merits of an appeal, but if we see a point of law arising as an ex parte application of course we would let the-appeal go forward to a full hearing. In this case, there are clear findings of fact by an experienced Tribunal which lead to the decision, which appears perfectly proper, and there is no prospect of the Company's appeal succeeding. In those circumstances we dismiss it at this stage.