United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	B. J. COOPER Representative


 


JUDGE PETER CLARK: On 27 June 1996 Ms Ravenscroft (the Applicant) presented an Originating Application to the Employment Tribunal. She named as Respondents (1) Jocrow (Steel) Ltd (Jocrow) a company by which she was employed as Managing Director and of which she was a board director and shareholder and (2) Mr Michael Kidd, a fellow director and shareholder (Mr Kidd).

She complained that she was summarily dismissed, both wrongfully and unfairly, by letter dated 30 March 1996 and had been discriminated against on grounds of her sex by both Respondents.

The claim was resisted, the Respondents contending that she had been fairly dismissed and for cause in that she had breached her duty of good faith owed to Jocrow in a number of respects. The claim for sex discrimination was denied.

The matter came before a full Tribunal chaired by Mr PRK Menon, sitting at the London (North) Employment Tribunal between 7-11 July 1997. In a reserved decision promulgated with extended reasons on 23 October 1997 (the substantive decision) the Tribunal dismissed all the Applicant's complaints, finding that she was guilty of duplicity in her dealings with a Mr Van Heren, a business rival of Mr Kidd, such that her conduct gave sufficient grounds to Jocrow for summarily dismissing her for gross misconduct.

Further, that decision was procedurally and substantively fair.

The sex discrimination claim was dismissed also, the Tribunal finding that the Applicant did not have a genuine belief that she had been subjected to any act of sex discrimination. That complaint was characterised by the Tribunal as frivolous and vexatious.

Following promulgation of the substantive decision the Respondents made an application for costs. That application came before the Chairman sitting alone on 17 March 1998.

In a reserved decision with extended reasons promulgated on 21 April 1998 the Chairman found that the Applicant had acted frivolously, vexatiously or otherwise unreasonably in conducting the proceedings; rejected her plea of impecuniousity made on her behalf and ordered her to pay one half of the Respondents' taxed costs in the proceedings up to and including the date of the costs hearing. It appears from his reasons that he gave serious consideration to ordering her to pay the whole of the costs incurred by the Respondents in the proceedings but bearing in mind that the Applicant had a right to bring unfair dismissal proceedings, he decided to take a more lenient view and thus ordered her only to pay half of the costs.

Against the costs decision the Respondents now appeal, contending that an order for their full taxed costs ought to have been made bearing in mind the findings made by the full Tribunal and indeed by the Chairman on the costs application. Mr Cooper has presented the appeal with disarming candour, accepting that as a non-lawyer he finds it difficult to argue perversity in the legal sense. However, our jurisdiction is limited to correcting errors of law and it seems to us that that is the only basis upon which the appeal could be put. We have considerable sympathy with the Respondents' position and would go as far as to say that had we been sitting at the costs hearing, we might very well have taken a different and less lenient view than did the Chairman. However the question for us ultimately was whether it could be properly said that his decision fell outside the range of that which a Chairman properly directing himself could reach. We have with some reluctance come to the conclusion that we are not able to say that that is the position in this case and accordingly, the appeal in our view, raises no arguable point of law to go to a full hearing and must be dismissed at this stage.