United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR O LEIGHTON Employment Law Consultant 11 Edgehill Road Southampton SO18 2AH


 


HIS HONOUR JUDGE LEVY QC: This is the preliminary hearing on appeal by Mr G. Butt, which comes to us in these circumstances. Late in 1997 a company was in trouble. Mr Butt came in one sense to its rescue; the effect of him coming to its rescue was to cause him a great deal of pecuniary loss; after he had come to its rescue, various employees of the company sought from him and others payment of sums due to them on the basis that he had taken over the undertaking of the business of the company. Their actions resulted in a hearing before an Employment Tribunal sitting in Southampton on 14 August 1998 and 13 October 1998. After considering carefully whether indeed Mr Butt had, under the appropriate legislation, taken over the business of the by now defunct company, in carefully considered Extended Reasons sent to the parties on 23 October 1998, the Tribunal decided that he had.

Mr Butt sought a review of that decision, which resulted in a further consideration of Mr Butt's case. The Review Decision was sent to the parties on 25 February 1999 including Extended Reasons for that decision. The Employment Tribunal held that it did not have jurisdiction to entertain the application. In the course of the further Extended Reasons, it went further into the facts of the case.

Mr Leighton appeared for Mr Butt at the hearing before the Tribunal. He has appeared on this hearing before us today. He has submitted, on behalf of Mr Butt, that the Tribunal wrongly misdirected itself in law. The Tribunal, we understand from Mr Leighton, of its own accord drew to the parties' attention the decision in Betts v Brintel Helicopters Limited [1997] ECR 792.

Mr Leighton accepted that the effect of Betts was properly summarised by the Employment Tribunal in paragraph 8 of its Extended Reasons but submitted that for the reasons given in Grounds 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 of Mr Butt's Notice of Appeal the Employment Tribunal reached a wrong conclusion when it determined that the economic entity of the company retained its identity on transfer.

We have considered the submissions made by Mr Leighton on behalf of Mr Butt, but we find that they do not raise an arguable point of law. In our judgment, the Employment Tribunal correctly addressed itself on the decision in Betts v Brintel Helicopters Limited and on the facts as found in paragraph 5 of the Extended Reasons came to a perfectly proper decision that there had been a transfer of the undertaking in the circumstances of this case.

Mr Leighton also submitted that another person might have been the buyer of the undertaking rather than Mr Butt. However that issue was dealt with fully in the findings of fact and in paragraphs 10-14 of the Extended Reasons. It is not open to us on appeal to allow there to be a further hearing of the case when the Employment Tribunal appears to have reached a conclusion which it was entitled to reach. In our judgment Mr Butt may have been very unfortunate in being required to pay the redundancy payments, which he was required to pay by the Employment Tribunal to the Applicants, but on the law, the decision reached by the Employment Tribunal was one that it was perfectly entitled to make.

This appeal has no prospects of success. We cannot therefore allow it to go a full tribunal. Accordingly we will dismiss it at this stage. We thank Mr Leighton for all the help he has given to us this morning in identifying the points on which his client wished to appeal and presenting them forcefully, although his submissions could not find favour.