MS JOSEPHINE FORD v MISS J COLLIER [2000] UKEAT 116_00_3103

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
BAILII case number: [2000] UKEAT 116_00_3103Case No Appeal No. EAT/116/00Venue 58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS
Between
MS JOSEPHINE FORDAPPELLANTMISS J COLLIERRESPONDENT
Before
His Honour Judge CollinsDate 31 March 2000
[1]APPEARANCES For the Appellant Ms J Ford (In person) For the Respondent Miss J Collier (In person) JUDGE COLLINS: This is an appeal against the decision of an employment tribunal sitting at London North whose extended reasons were promulgated on 26 November 1999. This is really a very unfortunate case. Miss Collier and Mrs Ford are acting in person and since this case started in February 1998 this is the fourth hearing. It has not been brought to a conclusion; when all is said and done it is only about £400. It is a great shame that the matter has not been resolved a very long time ago.[2]The point is that Miss Collier was either dismissed from or resigned her position as a manageress of a florist's shop at the end of January 1998. There was a dispute between Miss Collier who said she was dismissed and Mrs Ford who said that Miss Collier left voluntarily. It is on resolution of that dispute that the question turns as to whether Miss Collier is entitled to her £400 or not. She has attended today even though it is listed as a preliminary hearing ex parte.[3]The matter originally came on before a tribunal for hearing on 1 May 1998 which was commendably soon after the matter started. According to Mrs Ford she attended the tribunal hearing but Miss Collier did not and the tribunal accordingly dismissed the claim. Miss Collier tells us and there is no reason whatsoever to doubt, that she signed in at the tribunal on the date but was put in a different room and was never told when or where her case was being heard. So that although she took the trouble to turn up something went wrong in the administration of the tribunal on 1 May and her case never got heard. She sorted the position out on the same day before she left and tells us that within a couple of weeks she received a letter saying the case was going to be reinstated. Not long after that she was told that it was going to be heard on 4 March 1999. We are bound to say that seems odd. The tribunal gave a date for the initial hearing within two months of the complaint being made but was apparently unable to list restored hearing for another ten months -that is regrettable.[4]On the adjourned/restored hearing on 4 March 1999 Miss Collier attended, Mrs Ford did not and an award was made was made in Miss Collier's favour of £400. Mrs Ford has always maintained that she never received notice of the hearing and she asked for the decision of the tribunal to be reviewed on the ground that the interests of justice required it. On 12 November 1999 there was a hearing by a tribunal chaired by Mrs Hill and two members. They heard Mrs Ford's evidence and this:
"The Tribunal did not accept that the Notice of Hearing, which was properly addressed to the Respondents shop in Lambs Conduit Passage, was likely to have gone astray. It was noticeable that the only time the Respondent corresponded with the Tribunal was when there was a formal document such as the Originating Application or an order by the Tribunal that she should pay compensation to the Applicant. This appeared to the Tribunal to be rather too convenient to be true. We therefore were not prepared to reopen the case by way of review and dismissed the Respondent's application. The decision of 4 March 1999 therefore stands."
With all due respect to the tribunal we do not think that they gave sufficient reasons for disbelieving Mrs Ford's evidence on her oath. They obviously had doubts about it and set out those doubts but in our judgment the doubts expressed were simply inadequate as a reason for rejecting her evidence on oath. This tribunal knows from its own knowledge that mail does sometimes go adrift for a whole variety of reasons. So although we are unhappy about it because of the length of time we think that the interests of justice require that there should be a rehearing. Since Miss Collier is here and does not want to delay any longer than anybody else, we are going to treat this as a full hearing of the appeal and remit the case to the employment tribunal for a rehearing of the case on merits and we express the hope that the case can be listed at the employment tribunal with the least possible delay.