United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

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


 


MR JUSTICE KIRKWOOD: This is a preliminary hearing of an appeal by Mrs Liggins against a decision of an Industrial Tribunal at Stratford on 12th March 1997 that she owed to Miss Reynolds £100 being a week's wages in lieu of notice. Mrs Liggins has been unable to attend the hearing today but has not asked for an adjournment.

It seems that Mrs Liggins ran a pet shop. It may technically have been owned by a company that had ceased trading. Mrs Liggins was a director of that company. She ran the pet shop and she paid Miss Reynolds her weekly wages and completed her pay advice. As the tribunal found, at least by implication, she had engaged Miss Reynolds to work.

Miss Reynolds worked in the pet shop as a shop assistant. Latterly she worked a 36 hour week. The tribunal found her weekly net wage to be £100.00.

Miss Reynolds claimed that the shop was closed down without her being told and that she was due a week's pay in lieu in notice. In her form IT3, Mrs Liggins said that Miss Reynolds knew the shop was closing down and even took telephone calls from other shops offering to buy the stock. In the final week there was a big clearance sale. She gave Miss Reynolds a large bag of cat food worth £44.00 in addition to her final week's pay.

Miss Reynolds case was that a couple of weeks before 5th October 1996, Mrs Liggins told her that the shop may close for a short period for refurbishment. When she left work on Saturday, 5th October, she expected to return to work the following Tuesday, 8th October, but she was then told on the telephone that the shop had been cleared of stock and gutted. She said she had received no notice.

Mrs Liggins did not attend the Industrial Tribunal hearing. The tribunal was constituted by a Chairman alone, and he heard the oral evidence of Miss Reynolds. He found her to be credible and preferred what she said to the written submission of Mrs Liggins contained in her form IT3. He awarded Miss Reynolds £100.00.

Mrs Liggins appeals. Her Notice of Appeal is by way of a letter with a further letter of explanation. She explains that she cannot come here today because she has her hands full with three small children and no nearby family to look after them. She only gets £86.00 in benefits for the four of them, and cannot afford the £18.00 fare to come up to London for the hearing.

Mrs Liggins explains why she did not attend the Industrial Tribunal hearing. She had just left her violent husband and had taken refuge from him. He had burnt all her personal papers. She never received notice of the hearing. That is all of course very sad and unfortunate, but the onus really was on Mrs Liggins to keep the tribunal informed of her change of address. Mrs Liggins then says that Miss Reynolds received £100.00 per week not net but before tax and National Insurance, and she was also allowed to buy goods of pet food and the like, at cost. Secondly, she says, as she had indeed said in her form IT3, that Miss Reynolds knew that the shop was closing. She adds that Miss Reynolds also knew that she was closing the shop to get away from the eight years of her violent marriage. Mrs Liggins then refers to her own very sad and straightened circumstances which have left her more or less destitute.

In order to succeed upon an appeal from an Industrial Tribunal, Mrs Liggins would have to demonstrate either a material error of law causing the decision of the tribunal to be fatally flawed, or she would have to demonstrate a finding of fact that no reasonable tribunal could reach on the evidence before it. There is nothing in the letters that Mrs Liggins has written either by Notice of Appeal or subsequent explanatory letter, that begins to demonstrate either of those matters. The case is an unfortunate one, but there is nothing put before us that we think could begin to justify our interference with the decision of the Industrial Tribunal, so that this appeal must be dismissed at this stage.

[In her correspondence Mrs Liggins repeatedly stresses how important it is to her that her address should be kept confidential because she fears the consequences should her former husband find it out. Accordingly I shall direct that nothing should emanate from this tribunal that will indicate Mrs Liggins's current address, save of course in correspondence directly with her.]