United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR J T WILLIAMS (The Appellant in person)


 


THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE WALL

1. This is the Preliminary Hearing of an appeal by Mr J Trefor Williams who appeals from a decision of an Employment Tribunal dated 15 March 2001 dismissing his application for unfair constructive dismissal by his former employers, now the Carmarthenshire County Council. Mr Williams has appeared this morning in person and has conducted this hearing with good humour, honesty and courtesy. We are grateful to him. The Tribunal from which he appeals did not, for reasons which will appear, deal with the matter on its merits, but exercised its powers under paragraph 13(2)(e) of Schedule 1 of the Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rule of Procedure) Regulations 1993 to strike out the application on the basis that the matters of which the appellant was complaining had already been the subject of proceedings before an Employment Tribunal and that it was not possible for them to be resurrected.
2. The Appellant appeals that decision, and as I indicated a moment ago, the matter has now been listed for a Preliminary Hearing. We have to decide whether or not the Appellant has an arguable point of law which would enable us to allow the appeal to go forward to a Full Hearing. It is I think necessary to emphasis that those are our limited powers and that is our jurisdiction. We have no jurisdiction over issues of fact, however sympathetically we may feel about them in relation to Mr Williams' case.
3. The relevant chronology is as follows. The Appellant is now 72. Between September 1974 and August 1976 he was employed by the Respondents (then the Dyfed County Council) to teach Welsh and History through the medium of the Welsh language at a school in Dyfed. The headmaster of the school appears to have become dissatisfied with the Appellant's performance as a teacher. The Appellant says that there was no justification for this whatsoever. However, on
   13 October 1975 there was a meeting of the governors which appears to have passed a resolution requiring the Appellant to perform his duties in accordance with the headmaster's instructions.
4. Unfortunately, the matter was not resolved, and on 2 March 1976 there was a special meeting of the governing body of the school attended by the Appellant and his union representative which confirmed the governors' recommendation to the Education Committee that the Appellant should be dismissed. The Appellant was, however, offered a further hearing before a sub-committee appointed by the Education Committee.
5. Mr Williams' case is that the headmaster in particular gave information to the governors and the meeting which was untrue and unreliable. The Respondent's case was that the Appellant resigned voluntarily on 29 March 1976 with effect from the end of the summer term of that year. The Appellant accepts that he did resign. His case however, is that he was forced to resign and was thus constructively dismissed.
6. The Appellant applied to what was then an Industrial Tribunal. On 7 October 1976 that Tribunal dismissed the Appellant's application on the basis that it had been withdrawn by the Applicant. The Appellant says he withdrew on the advice of the general secretary of his professional association. That was a decision which he has now had cause, bitterly, to regret. That regret continues as was apparent from his submissions today.
7. What then happened was that he issued a fresh application in March 1978 which came before the Tribunal on 11 September 1978. This was, of course, over 18 months from the effective date of the termination of his employment. The question for the Tribunal was accordingly, did it have jurisdiction to entertain the claim? This in turn depended on whether or not it had been reasonably practicable for the Appellant to present his application within, or before the end of, the period of 3 months beginning with the effective date of termination. The Tribunal, in 1978, looked carefully at the history of the matter, including the withdrawal by the Applicant of his previous application in October 1976 and attempts he had made thereafter to have that decision reviewed and to appeal the decision to refuse a review.
8. The Tribunal takes up the story in these words in September 1978:

"Mr Williams also sent letters to other persons whom he thought might have authority or influence, but nothing materialised until, as already mentioned, in March this year there was received from his solicitors the originating application which is now before us. This outlines the previous procedural history and concludes with a prayer for justice. So far as it embodies a request to re-open the earlier case, we are not prepared to entertain it, and refer to the two review decisions in that case. [They then refer to other authority.] It has accordingly been listed for a preliminary hearing on two points, but in this decision we need deal with only one of them. The two points were, first, whether we could be satisfied that it was not reasonably practicable for Mr Williams to present his application within the statutory period – and further in that case whether he presented this application within a reasonable time thereafter – and secondly whether Mr Williams is debarred from taking proceedings altogether by the existence on the register of a decision dismissing his application and which there is apparently no procedural means to revoke."

They then go on to say that the second point is entirely technical and they do not propose to deal with it but the first question is:

"… whether one could reasonably expect a man in Mr Williams' position to have brought this application, or an application like it, within the period ending on 30 November 1976, or, to put it roughly, by the end of that year."

After giving a careful analysis of all the facts, the Tribunal came firmly to the conclusion, in 1978, that the application had not been brought within a reasonable time after it came practicable to do so, and that as a consequence the Tribunal could not entertain it.

9. There the matter rested, so far as the Tribunal was concerned, until 24 November 2000 when the current form ET1 was issued. Once again, it complains of unfair, constructive dismissal. The Tribunal's order is dated 15 March 2001. The reasons given by the Tribunal for dismissing the present application are as follows:

"1 By a Decision of the Employment Tribunals (formerly Industrial) promulgated on 18 September 1978 the applicant's application for compensation for unfair dismissal was dismissed.

2 By an application presented to the Employment Tribunal on 24 November 2000 the applicant is attempting to raise the matter which was the subject of the Decision of September 1978.

3 By letters dated 28 November, 2000, 22 December 2000 and 25 January 2001 sent to the applicant it was explained to him that the case had been decided and that it was not possible to resurrect it.

4 Every document and letter sent by the applicant to the Tribunal was read.

5 In the letter from the Tribunal dated 25 January 2001 the applicant was warned (conditional upon any argument that he wished to put forward) that the intention of the Chairman was to dismiss the application.

6 In considering the background and facts of the application the Tribunal in pursuit of its powers under Rule 13(2)(e) of the Industrial Tribunal (Constitutions and Rule of Procedure) Regulations 1993 dismisses the application."

10. The Appellant has written a number of letters to the Employment Appeal Tribunal many of which invoke the same theme. I quote from one of them, received on 23 March 2001 when he says that, in relation to the previous history:

"I do not remember receiving a copy of the Form but in the meantime I would like to say that my appeal on Points of Law is – Pace, the Chairman of the Cardiff Tribunal – is that

(1) not enough consideration was given to my appeal

(2) the delay in presenting my appeal has not been my fault

(3) Pace the Cardiff Tribunal Chairman again, he has misinterpreted my reasons for an appeal.

I have never stated that I sought 'Compensation' but I do want to restore my professional reputation: my good name as a Schoolmaster – especially as a teacher of Welsh, after false evidence was presented to the School Governors, without any opportunity for me to rebut the allegations of incompetence made against me. I was not surprised, therefore, that the School governors recommended my dismissal.

I would like to question three witnesses to corroborate my own evidence and I will be willing to be cross-examined in turn. My professional career has been destroyed and I have never been in full-time employment despite many applications for employment, not only in the teaching profession, since I was forced to resign my last appointment."

11. Both the letters and the argument before us by Mr Williams this morning confirm that he does wish indeed to reopen events surrounding his resignation/dismissal from his employment in 1976. He repeated today his plea for a Full Hearing and the opportunity to cross-examine the headmaster who had given effectively inaccurate or false evidence against him plus, the secretary of his professional association, and the legal advisor to his professional association.
12. As we explained to Mr Williams, these are events which are now coming up to (and in some cases exceeding) 25 years old. It is simply not possible to re-open them. Even if it were within our power, we would think it undesirable to do so, but as we explained to Mr Williams, it is simply not within our power in any event. Our power is limited to deciding whether or not the Chairman of the Tribunal on 15 March erred or made a mistake in law when he refused to entertain Mr Williams' application. We can see no error in law. There is a well known Latin phrase which translates into English as – 'It is in the interests of justice that there should be an end to litigation'.
13. We have considerable sympathy for Mr Williams in the objectives which he seeks. I am very sorry that he labours under a sense of injustice, that his professional reputation has been besmirched and there is no means to remedy that. I regret very much that he feels his case has never been fully heard; but he must understand that we simply cannot re-open questions that are 25 years old. The Appellant had his opportunity for the matter to be heard in 1976 when the application was withdrawn in circumstances which he has told us about. There was plainly no error of law then, or in 1978 when the Tribunal refused to re-open the matter. If that was the case then, how much more must it be in the year 2001.
14. As we tried to make clear to Mr Williams, as sympathetically as we could, the Employment Appeal Tribunal is a Tribunal of law, not of fact, and we simply cannot help him. In our judgment the Tribunal had no choice but to dismiss this application. The appeal stands no prospect of success. In our judgment it would be quite wrong to allow it to go forward. It must therefore be dismissed at this stage.