United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

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


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): The purpose of this Preliminary hearing is to determine whether the prospective Appellant has an arguable point of law, fit for hearing before a full panel of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, arising out of the unanimous decision of an Industrial Tribunal which concluded that the prospective Appellant's application that she had been the victim of sexual harassment should be dismissed.

That decision was sent to the parties on 10 July 1996. The decision recorded that the Applicant, Mrs Staniforth had, with her husband, been employed by Red Lodge Homecare, which is an organisation providing home care in the community. Also employed was a Mr Arnold. It was Mrs Staniforth's contention that she was the victim of sex discrimination in the form, effectively, of sexual harassment.

The Industrial Tribunal examined each and every one of her particular complaints with great care. Essentially they concluded that wherever the evidence of the Applicant, and, in particular, her husband [Mr Staniforth] conflicted with that advanced on behalf of the employers, then they preferred the evidence of the employers. They regarded Mr Staniforth as a witness on whom they could not place reliance, and they indicated that it was necessary to the success of the Applicant's complaint that his evidence should be accepted. It was not.

There is no need, we think, in this judgment, to set out in any detail all the various allegations that were discussed before the Industrial Tribunal in a hearing which lasted for four days. We see nothing wrong with the approach of the Industrial Tribunal. Indeed we think that in many ways this decision is a model of its kind.

The grounds on which the Appellant wishes to appeal do not disclose in our judgment any argument on points of law. What they wish to do essentially is to re-argue and re-open all the issues of fact which were so carefully gone into by the Industrial Tribunal. It is a misuse of the procedure here for such contentions to be made. Our jurisdiction is to deal only with points of law. We are quite satisfied that none of the complaints made in the Notice of Appeal, which was drafted by Mr Staniforth, raises any arguable point of law. Accordingly, in these circumstances we inevitably must conclude that there is no point of law fit for a full hearing before the panel of this Tribunal.

I should add that the prospective Appellant has not appeared before us today. There is no reason why she should. We have carefully taken into account everything that has been written on her behalf in connection with the prospective appeal. We have made attempts to contact her just in case there had been some mistake, or some difficulty with travel. We are satisfied as a result of the limited enquiries which we have undertaken, that there is no reason to believe that the reason why she is not here is because she is either unaware of the proceedings or unable to attend today. Accordingly we dismiss this appeal.