United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	THE APPELLANT NEITHER PRESENT NOR REPRESENTED
For the Respondents	THE RESPODNENTS NEITHER PRESENT NOR REPRESENTED


 


MR JUSTICE MAURICE KAY: This is an interlocutory appeal from a decision of the Employment Tribunal at Sheffield.

1. The position is that the substantive hearing of the matter in Sheffield is due to take place tomorrow. The applicant/appellant, Mrs Thistlethwaite, has applied for an adjournment of that date, but it has been refused and she now appeals that decision to us.
2. The Employment Tribunal sent out a Notice of Hearing to the parties on 10th April 2000, giving the date of 21st June 2000 for the hearing. The document giving notice contained the standard form provision in clause 2 in these terms:

"Unless there are wholly exceptional circumstances, no application for postponement due to non-availability of witnesses or for other reasons will be entertained if it is received more than 14 days after the date of this notice. Any such application must be in writing and state the full grounds and any other unavailable dates in the six weeks following the above hearing date."

The 14 days after the date of the notice expired, therefore, on 24th April 2000.

3. A month after that, on 23rd May 2000, Mr Thistlethwaite, writing on behalf of his wife, wrote to the Employment Tribunal requesting an adjournment. His letter stated:

"I wish to bring to your notice that unfortunately an important witness will be unavailable for the above case on the date arranged.

In accordance with the requirements laid down I request a further hearing date be assigned to the case.

Further to this I am of the opinion that the hearing in my view may take at least 2 days due to the amount of witnesses that are to testify on Mrs M Thistlethwaite's behalf."

That met with a reply from the Tribunal dated 1st June 2000 saying that the letter had been referred to a chairman who had considered the request "but has refused to allow postponement because this case was listed on 10th April and the applicant has had ample time to check on the availability of witnesses."

4. The appeal to us seeks to appeal against that decision. A letter dated 6th June sets out the contentions on behalf of Mrs Thistlethwaite and they include this statement:

"… an important witness on behalf of the claimant has since booked a holiday which makes it impossible for their attendance as a witness. The Tribunals was immediately informed of this development 4 weeks prior to the hearing well within the time limit required for a postponement which has since been refused."

5. The question whether or not to grant an adjournment fell within the discretion of the Employment Tribunal. The Employment Appeal Tribunal can only interfere with an exercise of such a discretion if it is demonstrated to the Employment Appeal Tribunal that the exercise of discretion was plainly wrong. We are unable to come to the conclusion that that is so in the present case. We do not know who the witness is, nor what light she would be likely to throw on the issues which are to be decided by the Employment Tribunal. We do not know when or in what circumstances she booked her holiday, although it seems that the booking may have arisen after the Tribunal originally gave the date.
6. In the correspondence, Mr Thistlethwaite on behalf his wife, seeks to draw comparisons between their present circumstances and circumstances which existed on a previous occasion when the Tribunal did adjourn this matter on 22nd March 2000. It seems to us, having read the summary reasons for the adjournment on that occasion, that the primary reason for adjourning the matter was of the Tribunal's own motion in that on that very day it had promulgated a decision in the case between Mr Thistlethwaite and the respondents, and the Tribunal stated:

"2. … neither party has had the opportunity of considering the implication s or the effect that that decision may have on the present proceedings."

That was the primary reason for adjournment, although some consideration was also given to the position of the respondents.

7. Looking at all the material before us, and in the absence of any oral submissions, we have come to the conclusion that the refusal to adjourn tomorrow's hearing has not been shown to have been a legally erroneous exercise of discretion and the appeal must therefore be dismissed.
8. The Notice of Appeal makes a number of allegations about the Chairman of the Employment Tribunal and, indeed, they include an allegation of bias. Those allegations are not advanced in the way required by the Practice Direction. We can see nothing on the face of the papers to substantiate or support such allegations. In all the circumstances, they can play no part in our consideration. Accordingly, the hearing date of 21st June 2000, that is to say tomorrow, remains. The appeal is dismissed.