Brown v Forbuoys Plc [1993] UKEAT 209_92_1401

EAT

Brown v Forbuoys Plc

[1993] UKEAT 209_92_1401 · 1993-01-14

JUDGE J HICKS:

This is the preliminary hearing of Miss Brown's appeal against the Decision of the Industrial Tribunal. Miss Brown had made two applications: one was a complaint of unfair dismissal and the other was an application for a redundancy payment. The Industrial Tribunal dealt with a preliminary point on each application, which was whether the application was in time and, if not, whether the time should be extended, and in both instances they reached a decision against Miss Brown, and her applications therefore failed at that stage. She appeals, and by her notice of appeal she says that the grounds are that she was told, by an unspecified person, ".... that by law I couldn't take them to Court without

a staff handbook" . She then goes on to deal with the circumstances of obtaining the staff handbook and the contractual provisions about that.

The matter of the staff handbook was clearly ventilated before the Industrial Tribunal, because in paragraph 4 of their Reasons they say:

"4 Miss Brown's explanation for her failure to put in her application earlier was, firstly, that she was not aware of the 3 month time limit and, secondly, that before taking any steps to complain of unfair dismissal she wanted to get a copy of the respondent's hand book. She does not seem to have made any strenuous efforts to obtain a copy of the hand book. She eventually obtained a copy through a friend at the end of May 1991 and took it to her solicitors early in June 1991. The solicitors then informed her of the 3 month time limit and her application was duly made, and received on 21 June 1991."

I should say that the relevant dates were that the date of termination of employment was 6 December 1990, the latest date for an application for unfair dismissal was, therefore, 5 March 1991, and that application was, therefore, over three months out of time. The latest date for an application in relation to redundancy payment would have been 5 June, and that application was, therefore, sixteen days out of time.

Having made that reference to the facts generally, and the significance of the hand book in particular, the Industrial Tribunal continued:

"5 We do not think that any of these facts rendered it impracticable for Miss Brown to comply with the 3 month time limit. This is a strict time limit and only exceptional circumstances would justify the tribunals exercise of its discretion to excuse the failure to comply with it. We do not think that an adequate explanation has been given in this case for the long delay."

In our view, therefore, that ground does not disclose any error of law on the part of the Tribunal. They did take into account what Miss Brown put before them in relation to the handbook and, nevertheless, arrived at the conclusion as a matter of fact (and issues of fact are entirely for the Industrial Tribunal) that that did not render it impracticable for Miss Brown to comply. We see, therefore, no ground on which their decision in that respect can be put aside for that reason.

They clearly must also have had the matter of the handbook in mind when they went on to deal with the question of whether it was just and equitable to extend the time of six months allowed for the other application in relation to the redundancy payment.

Since Miss Brown is not present nor represented we also considered whether we, ourselves, could see any other error of law on the part of the Industrial Tribunal, and we have come to the conclusion that there is none to be derived from the Reasons which they give. I have read paragraph 5 of their Reasons where they deal with the unfair dismissal application; they deal with the issue of fact, whether it was reasonable practicable for Miss Brown to comply and since they found that it was reasonably practicable, they did not need to go on to consider the question of discretion as to whether it was reasonable to extend the time. They do seem, by the rest of the paragraph, to have considered the discretionary element and decided that also against her, but they did not need to do that and that is not, therefore, a relevant error of law in any way.

The question of the extension of time for the redundancy payment application was a question of pure discretion under the test of whether it was just and equitable to extend and they dealt with it on that basis. We see no error in the way they dealt with it and we must, therefore, dismiss this appeal at this preliminary stage.