United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR P SINGH (The Appellant in Person)


 


HIS HONOUR JUDGE WILKIE QC

1. We think that the first point is that in paragraph 20 of their decision the Tribunal made no award in respect of aggravated damages but did not, other than by a bare assertion, say why the behaviour complained of did not satisfy the requirements. Normally that would not be a ground for appeal but we cannot help but notice that in the decision of the 17 February 2000 in paragraph 27 there was a description of the event of 19 November as being an unpleasant meeting which left the Applicant sufficiently traumatised to decide that he could no longer continue working that day. More significantly, in paragraph 29 of that decision, the Tribunal made a series of findings about Mr Mortimer to the effect that he acted consistently in bad faith as far as Mr Singh's return to the Wolfson was concerned and highlighted the things that he did to place obstacles in Mr Singh's way. We refer in particular to the passage in the second half of that paragraph. It is important that the original decision should be placed before the Employment Appeal Tribunal. It seems to us that someone reading paragraph 20 of the remedies decision having knowledge of paragraphs 27 and 29 of the original decision would be troubled to know why it was, in the light of their findings on the first occasion, that there was simply a bald dismissal of an aggravated damages claim.
2. The second point is this. The Tribunal awarded damages for a period of six months from the date of the incident concerned. In so doing it relied to some extent on the medical opinion of Dr Blacker, but it did not do so wholly, it sought to temper Mr Blacker's purely medical assessment with some aspects of, what one might call, the realism to be applied by the Industrial Jury. That is to say, looking at the background events. However, Mr Singh has, in his large bundle, today drawn our attention to documents at pages 31 to 34, page 64 and page 110. Those documents show that until 24 June 1998, that is to say more than six months from the incident in question, Mr Singh was pursuing a grievance. Then on 24 June he was told that the investigation of that grievance had been completed. It does not appear to have been until
   10 July that he was told that the investigation of the grievance had concluded that that he had nothing to be aggrieved about. That letter referred to a further meeting that was to be set up, and on 30 July (that is the document at page 34) there was some reference to a meeting being sought to be set up on 21 August, presumably as an end point to the grievance process and the first step in trying to get him back to work.
3. The document at page 110 is a series of occupational health notes apparently taken by Dr Robertson, the Respondent's occupational health officer. On 15 January 1998 he records that Mr Singh was tense and depressed and very distressed and Dr Robertson recommended that he stay off work until the grievance had been resolved. It seems to us that if the Tribunal was minded not just to take a purely medical perspective on this question but attempted to place the medical advice into a factual perspective, at the very least it is arguable that they simply ignored that factual perspective by failing to take any account of the fact that it took over six months from the incident complained of for the Respondent to process Mr Singh's grievance, which it turned out was in fact a genuine one, and that the Respondent's own occupational health representative was informing them that he should not return to work until after the outcome of that process.
4. In the light of that history it may well be, and certainly is arguable, that a Tribunal limiting Mr Singh's period off work due to the initial incident, to six months, was flying in the face of the evidence of those procedures and the advice being received by the Respondents. At this stage all we need to be satisfied of is that these points are arguable and we think that they eminently are arguable. They are the only points however which are arguable. The other points which Mr Singh has raised are essentially matters where he invites us to reopen the facts and to go behind the medical evidence upon which the Tribunal passed its considered judgment. That is not the role of this Employment Appeal Tribunal. It seems to us that this is a Category C case and should be listed for in excess of half a day. Skeleton arguments on these limited points of argument should be furnished to the Employment Appeal Tribunal not later than fourteen days after the hearing is listed.