MS S DEVANI v NOTTINGHAM CITY COUNCIL MS P O'BRIEN MS S GREGORY MR N HANSON [2002] UKEAT 0827_01_1904
[1]APPEARANCES For the Appellant MR O SEGEL (of Counsel) Instructed by: UNISON 1 Mabledon Place London WC1H 9AJ JUDGE J R REID QC: This is a preliminary hearing of an appeal from a decision of an Employment Tribunal held at Nottingham over a very considerable number of days, beginning in February 2000, and culminating in April 2001. The decision was sent to the parties on 16 May 2001. There were two applications before the Employment Tribunal, the first alleged victimisation, the second alleged unfair dismissal, putting it in very short terms.[2]So far as the first of those decisions is concerned, the difficulty that we have and which has been pressed upon us by Mr Segel on behalf of the Applicant is that there does not appear from the decision to be any clear answer being given by the Tribunal to the claims made in that originating application The matter, in so far as it is dealt with, is dealt with very peremptosly. What is clear is that there is no decision in the decision paragraphs at the beginning because both of those are said to be decisions by a majority and when one looks at the extended reasons, there is no difference of view between the majority and the minority over anything which occurs until after the events giving rise to the first complaint. In those circumstances that matter clearly has to go for a full hearing.[3]So far as the second application is concerned, the Applicant takes essentially the point that it is impossible to discover from the decision why it is that she lost and what is said is that itself is an error of law. Beyond that it is said the evidence was such that it necessarily was perverse for her to have lost. The skeleton argument which has been placed before us sets out in the points it is intended to raise. It suffices for me to give one example. One of the issues before the Tribunal was the issue of certain comparators and a good deal of time and effort was devoted to considering those comparators, but there is nothing in the decision to indicate that the Tribunal had before them any evidence about comparators, still less is there anything in the decision which indicates why the Tribunal either disregarded the comparators or regarded the treatment meted out to the Applicant as being on a par with that meted out to the comparators. I said I would stick to one example and so I shall but that is not to suggest that that is the only complaint which is made of the decision in relation to the second application.[4]In our judgment, the appropriate course is for this matter to go to a full hearing. We will put it in category B and we will indicate that the time estimate at this stage is one day. If the parties regard that as being unlikely to be enough, then they should inform the Tribunal as soon as possible. If they do not, they will get a one day hearing slot and the likely start of that hearing will be a timetabling as to the length of time that each of them can take about their submissions to ensure that it does finish within the one day.