United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	NO APPEARANCE BY OR REPRESENTATION ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT
For the Respondent	NO APPEARANCE BY OR REPRESENTATION ON BEHALF OF THE RESPONDENT


 


JUDGE H WILSON: This is the preliminary hearing on the merits or otherwise of the Notice of Appeal. There are no appearances, the liquidators having indicated that they do not intend to appear. The principle ground of appeal is contained in paragraph 3 of the Notice which complains that the Tribunal failed to take full account of the employer's explanation that the difficulties over the forklift training course were only part of the reason for her dismissal and that, by disregarding the seven other issues raised by the employer, the Tribunal put itself in the place of the employer. It substituted its own decision for that of the employer, and the Notice of Appeal goes on to complain that the "final straw" argument was not given due attention and weight by the Tribunal. The final catch-all complaint is that it was additionally perverse of the Tribunal to reach the decision that it did reach on the evidence submitted to it.

We have considered those grounds of appeal in the light of the decision which was promulgated to the parties and received on 2 November 1998. The Extended Reasons for the decisions reached by the Tribunal extends to over 8 pages of A4 typescript. In our view, those reasons are comprehensive and the law is accurately stated, dealing with all the matters that the Tribunal should deal with.

The Extended Reasons evaluate in paragraph 3 the evidence that has been heard. So far as the evidence of the Applicant, as she then was, is concerned, she is found to have been an honest and reliable witness as was her supportive witness, Mr Anthony Bilbruck, the son of the owner of the company and therefore in a difficult position. He was described as looking uncomfortable when giving his evidence, but the evidence was found to be on the whole reliable. So far as the evidence on behalf of the company is concerned, where it was relevant it was found to be unreliable. One witness was found to be irrelevant and the final witness, the Managing Director, Mr Geoffrey Bilbruck, who appeared to be blunt and straight, nevertheless unfortunately for the company, gave evidence which was more advantageous to the Applicant's case than it was to the Respondent's.

The Tribunal's decision on this point concludes by stating that, having listened carefully to all of the evidence, the Tribunal preferred, whenever there was conflict, the evidence given by and on behalf of the Applicant, to that given on behalf of the Respondent, save where they indicate to the contrary in their findings of fact.

The Tribunal then goes on to deal with the matters at issue between the parties. The principal matter centred around a training course for forklift drivers which the complainant did not think was satisfactory or up to standard and she had made quite a lot of complaint about that.

There were then several other matters which were set out on behalf of the company, Mr Naylor who appeared for company, invited the Tribunal to look at the whole of the evidence and find that the principal reason for her dismissal was her conduct generally and invited them to have particular regard to seven issues. These are the seven issues which the Notice of Appeal asserts were not taking account of by the Tribunal.

In fact, we find that each one of the seven was dealt with separately and comprehensively by the Tribunal and rejected. In those circumstances, we find that the decision reached by the Tribunal cannot be described in any way as perverse and we find that the grounds of appeal are without merit and accordingly the appeal is dismissed.