United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	NO APPEARANCE BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANTS


 


JUDGE C SMITH QC: This is an application for leave to proceed to a full hearing of an appeal by Action Desk Solutions Ltd who were the employers before the Employment Tribunal against a decision of the Employment Tribunal held at Nottingham on 16th June 1996, of which extended reasons were sent to the parties on 3rd July 1998, when the Chairman, sitting alone, held that the appellants had made an unauthorised deduction from the applicant, Mr J L Lewis' wages. He ordered the appellants to pay Mr Lewis the amount of the unauthorised deduction, £982.62, and he found that the appellants were in breach of his contract of service, so he ordered the appellants to pay him the sum of £1,433.96 by way of damages.

It is clear from the extended reasons that the Chairman correctly set out the relevant law particularly in paragraphs 3 and 4 of the decision. The Chairman then proceeded to make clear findings of fact in paragraph 5 in a detailed paragraph with a number of subparagraphs. The Chairman then pronounced himself satisfied that there had been unauthorised deductions which he calculated and he ordered repayment under s. 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The Chairman then went on to conclude that the appellants were in breach of contract and ordered that there should be damages in respect of the breach calculated by reference to the notice period of 22 days at £65.18 per day totalling £1,433.96. The Chairman then went on to dismiss the claim in relation to accrued holiday pay. On the face of it it was a perfectly clear decision and quite unexceptional in the sense that it set out the law correctly, found the facts and applied the principles of law to the facts that he had found.

The position today is that, although of course there is a Notice of Appeal and an affidavit and the Chairman's comments on the affidavit, which documents we have all considered carefully, the appellants have not attended before us. Nevertheless, we have considered all the papers carefully and reminded ourselves that the appellants only have to show an arguable case to be allowed to proceed to a full hearing of their appeal.

The points taken are very short. First of all a criticism is made to the effect that the Chairman denied the parties, in particular the appellants, the right to sum up their cases at the end of the evidence and that matter is amplified in the affidavit. The Chairman's response to that is very clear, and, in our judgment, very cogent, for he points out that there was no question of the parties being denied final speeches, he simply followed his usual practice in cases of short duration where both parties are unrepresented by lawyers and the issues have been fully dealt with in the evidence, and where both sides had already stated their respective cases in the course of the evidence. In our judgment that was an entirely proper and correct approach for the Chairman to take. We note that the Chairman goes on to say that when he asked both parties whether they had anything to add, both said they had nothing to say other than that which they had already stated in the witness box. We cannot see that that gives rise to any possible ground of appeal.

Secondly, there is a suggestion that the Chairman had behaved in a manner that was biased against Mr Owen, who was the director of the appellant company, because it emerged in the evidence that Mr Owen had apparently been disqualified as a director under proceedings, presumably in the High Court, relating to such matters, at which the Chairman said that that was a relevant factor. It is suggested that in some way that was indicative of bias. In our judgment we accept entirely what the Chairman has to say in relation to that matter to the effect that the case was decided on the evidence and that there was in fact no bias whatsoever in favour of Mr Lewis or against Mr Owen. We find accordingly that on that ground also there is no arguable ground of appeal.

For those reasons this application is dismissed.