United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	THE APPELLANT NOT PRESENT NOR REPRESENTED


 


MR COMMISSIONER HOWELL QC

1. In this Appeal before us today for Preliminary Hearing, Ms Lisa Friend seeks to pursue an Appeal against the decision of the London Central Employment Tribunal contained in extended reasons sent to the parties on 24 November 2000, at pages 5-10 of the Appeal file before us. The proceedings before the Tribunal were a complaint of unfair dismissal and breach of contract by Ms Friend against her former employer, a company called Hazemead Ltd which is an agent for people in the entertainment business. Her complaint alleged that her dismissal by a Miss Chudleigh who is a director and founder of the agency on 29 February 2000 was unfair and wrongful. The Tribunal found in Ms Friend's favour that she had been unfairly dismissed for a reason related to capability and it rejected arguments by the Respondent that conduct was a proper ground for her dismissal on that date.
2. However, the compensation awarded by the Tribunal to Ms Friend was very limited. It consisted only of an award of one week's pay plus two weeks' pay in lieu of notice. The reason the Tribunal gave for restricting the award in that way was that although it was satisfied that her peremptory dismissal by Miss Chudleigh on 29 February 2000 was a breach of all reasonable standards of procedure, it was also satisfied that Miss Chudleigh (who it was plain from the evidence has a volatile disposition) would have still pursued the question of Ms Friend's dismissal; and would have dismissed her for capability even after she had calmed down following the incident that caused the peremptory dismissal, having regard in particular to earlier warnings that had been given to Ms Friend about the standard of her work.
3. However, it appears to us that there is an arguable ground to warrant our directing this case to go forward for a full hearing of Ms Friend's appeal against that basis of compensation, in that the Tribunal appear to have focused themselves in paragraph 18 of their extended reasons principally on what they expected to happen once Miss Chudleigh cooled down, and do not appear to have addressed specifically the question of whether the assumed ultimate dismissal of Ms Friend at the end of the further two week period would itself have been reasonable and fair in all the circumstances. That appears to us to give Ms Friend an arguable ground to warrant our directing that this appeal should go forward to a full hearing before the Employment Appeal Tribunal, on whether the Employment Tribunal misdirected themselves by failing to ask the right question.
4. I should have said that Miss Friend is unable to appear before us today because the Employment Appeal Tribunal has been informed that she now has a new job and the case having been put into the list at short notice she was unable to arrange attendance by her or on her behalf in time. Having considered all the papers we have as I say been satisfied that there is one arguable ground which warrants her appeal going forward for further consideration and that we accordingly direct. We order that the case should go forward to a full hearing limited the one issue that we have identified. The case is to be set down in Category C. Time estimate for the hearing – half a day. We do not consider on the material before us that it is necessary for the Chairman to be asked to produce notes of the evidence; and we finally direct that skeleton arguments should be exchanged between the parties and lodged with the Employment Appeal Tribunal office not later than fourteen days before the date to be fixed for the full hearing of the Appeal.