United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR O AL-SAADOON (Solicitor)
For the Respondent	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE RESPONDENT


 


JUDGE BYRT QC: This is an ex parte application for an adjournment of a case which is due for an adjourned hearing tomorrow. Initially the proceedings began on 25 November before the Industrial Tribunal at London (North) and was then adjourned. We know not as to when the date of 4th and 5th March was fixed. In any event it is due for further hearing tomorrow and the day after.

Mr Saadoon from a firm called Salfiti & Co has appeared before us and expressed in clear terms the dilemma in which his firm is positioned. There has been a change of solicitors, and his firm was only instructed at the end of last week. Although the Appellants were represented by Counsel on 25 November, they do not know the name of that Counsel and so far Mr Saadoon or his Principals have been unable to find out. As a consequence, there is no certainty that if this case does come on for hearing tomorrow, the Appellants are even going to be represented by somebody who knows anything about the case at all.

Mr Saadoon says that he still has no papers concerning the case and therefore would be in no position to instruct Counsel if Counsel did attend. It appears that the relationship between the Respondents and their former solicitors has broken down, owing to a disagreement about fees. The issue between them only came to light at the end of last week as the result of advice of their accountants.

In the circumstances, although we are considering an appeal from a decision of an Industrial Tribunal who in their discretion refused the adjournment, we feel that the case cannot go ahead without there being a real risk that injustice would be done to the Appellant company. We feel, therefore, that we have got to allow the appeal.

There is then the issue of costs. By allowing the appeal we hope that there will be a time and opportunity to prevent the Respondent's representative attending court. That will save some costs. But at the end of the day there probably will be additional costs thrown away by this adjournment.

There is a plea by letter from the Respondent's solicitors that we make a stringent order for costs as the price of granting this adjournment. We think that it would be wrong to do that in view of the fact that Mr Saadoon is able to tell us so very little about the circumstances of this case and the background to the application for the adjournment. So, in consequence, we propose to make no order at this time, save to reserve all issues of costs thrown away by this adjournment to the Industrial Tribunal which eventually hears the adjourned hearing.

We express the hope that the Regional Chairman for London (North) can make some arrangements for an early resumption of this case. We appreciate that this will not be an adjournment just of a few days or a week or two. It will probably be a month or so, but we hope that something can be done for the benefit of the Respondent to make sure that he is not prejudiced as a result of the delays which will inevitably arise from this adjournment.