United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	No appearance or representation by or on behalf of the Appellant


 


JUDGE J R REID QC

1. Dr Abegaze, who is a frequent attender at the Employment Appeal Tribunal is anxious to appeal from an Order that required him to provide disclosure of a substantial number of documents. The Order was made a considerable time ago. He appealed against it. That appeal was stood out so that he could apply for a review. He applied for a review.
2. The review was conducted and on 30 October of last year, the Chairman, Mr Threlfall, ruled as follows:

"In view of the comments of the Respondent in its letter of 7 September 2001, it seems to the Chairman that the Applicant should provide the documents as already ordered. If the Applicant's case before this respondent is "on all fours" with a large number of earlier claims that may well have a bearing on the assessment of the evidence and in particular in determining any inferences to be drawn. There is nothing in the Applicant's letter of 24 October 2001 which alters the position at the time of the original order.

Accordingly, the applicant shall either comply with the order within 14 days or renew his appeal to the EAT."

3. Dr Abegaze renewed his appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal by an undated letter received here on 26 June. He made an application for an adjournment on the grounds of ill health. The Registrar directed that the matter should remain in the list for hearing today, and the direction continued:

"You may, of course, wish to renew these submissions by way of preliminary point on this date. In doing so, the Registrar has directed that you must supply to the EAT independent medical evidence as to:-

1. A recent examination, by your medical practitioner;

2. The practitioner's view as to your ability to cope with an EAT hearing (not involving the giving of evidence) on 21 June [July ?] 2002;

3. If in the practitioner's view you will not be able to cope, a view of the likely prognosis, with particular reference to when you would be likely to be able to cope and a view of when it was that such inability first arose.

The President has not accepted, as you say, that your grounds for making an application for adjournment on medical grounds in EAT/1078/01 is a good reason for adjournment. This appeal was adjourned purely on the basis of the fact that the President has restored parts of the Notice of Appeal that had been previously struck out."

That last paragraph refers to the fact that in his application for an adjournment, Dr Abegaze sought to draw support from the fact that another of his appeals before this Tribunal had been stood out of the list.

4. The position today is that he has not attended and he has not complied with the directions of the Registrar and we therefore propose to dispose of the appeal, which we do very simply by saying there is nothing whatsoever in any of the documentation before us which leads us to suppose that Dr Abegaze has any grounds of complaint about the Decision below. It seems to us that that Decision was an obviously correct and eminently sensible one. This appeal is therefore dismissed.