United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR PHILLIPS (Solicitor) Messrs Thomas Magnay & Co Solicitors 8 St Mary's Green Whickham Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE16 4DN


 


LORD JOHNSTON: This is the judgment of the tribunal in respect of a preliminary hearing of the appeal at the instance of Thomas Magnay & Co against Ms C Burns. The background to the matter is that the Industrial Tribunal held that the respondent had been unfairly dismissed by the appellant on 30th November 1996 during a time when she was both ill and pregnant. No challenge is made to the substance of the decision before us, but there were two grounds of appeal advanced.

The first was that it appears that the applicant before the tribunal disavowed any of three remedies available; namely, reinstatement, re-engagement or compensation, and was subsequently persuaded, if that is that right way to put it, by the tribunal Chairman to opt for one of them and in that respect a compensation order was therefore made. Before us, Mr Phillips argued that in terms of s.112 of the 1996 Act such a persuasion, if we may put it that way, was incompetent having regard to the fact that all the tribunal should do and could do in any given circumstances, was to explain to the applicant what orders might be made and in what circumstances they may be made, and leave it on that basis.

With regard to this ground of appeal which is highly technical, it is in our view inherent in the general jurisdiction of administration of justice particularly involving party litigants, that a tribunal or Court should endeavour to assist an applicant if an apparent oddity or absurdity is emerging and that is clearly the position in this case. If that is too broad a construction of the statute, the practical politics of this matter are that the only course open to us if the view was reached that the proceedings had been incompetently handled, would be to order parties to start again. We cannot conceive that that is in the interests of justice or the parties themselves, in any respect. That ground of appeal therefore fails.

The second ground relates to the issue of compensation for future loss, where it was suggested in argument that being pregnant the applicant should not have been entitled to any future or economic loss that issue was therefore sufficient to allow the matter to proceed to a full tribunal to consider the whole of that question.

We recognise that the tribunal have ordered a period of a further 18 weeks in respect of future loss on a somewhat broad brush assessment, but it is quite clear that they took into account factors they were entitled to take into account in reaching that conclusion. While it might be that another tribunal would take a different view, we cannot see that there is material before the Employment Appeal Tribunal which would require it to take a different view from that reached by the tribunal upon the evidence. Furthermore, again, we do not consider that it is in the interests of the parties, or indeed would be appropriate given the findings of the tribunal, to remit the matter back to the same tribunal for a further hearing.

For these reasons this application is refused and the appeal will be dismissed.