In the recent Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) case of Joao v Mesh Computers Plc, an important point of procedure was highlighted which sheds more light on the discretionary powers of Employment Tribunals.

Mr Joao brought a claim of racial discrimination against his employer, alleging that the reason he had not been moved to his preferred area of work within the company for almost two years when he believed the transfer could have taken place far sooner was because of his race.

When he was later moved back to his original department, Mr Joao’s strong disagreement with this move eventually led to a disciplinary hearing and Mr Joao was dismissed. Acting in person, Mr Joao submitted an ET1 document which set out the entire chain of events and sought compensation for, among other things, “loss of employment”.

However, in the box on the form which asked if the claim was about unfair dismissal he ticked “no”, and stated elsewhere on the form that his claim was about “unjustified demotion”. Despite this, the Employment Tribunal gave the complaint the classification “UDL”, the code for unfair dismissal, and Mesh’s legal representatives had issued their ET3 on this basis.

At the original Employment Tribunal, the court attempted to establish the facts of the claim and untangle the confusion that had arisen. It concluded that the claim was not one of unfair dismissal, and refused Mr Joao permission to amend his claim to include such a complaint as he would be out of time, and the amendment would entail a postponement of the case, with all the necessary costs that would incur.

Mr Joao appealed against this decision to the EAT, and won.

The EAT found that the original Tribunal had fundamentally misread the situation. Mr Joao did not need to resubmit an entirely new case to have his unfair dismissal claim heard - the facts had already been pleaded and the evidence was before the court, so all that was called for was for the case to be “relabelled” as an unfair dismissal case. This was within the court’s discretionary powers given the circumstances.

Cox J stated: “A degree of caution is required in assessing a late application to amend in such circumstances, in particular when, until the first day of the hearing, both the Employment Tribunal and [Mesh] had proceeded on the basis that [Mr Joao's] complaints did include the claim which he sought formally to add by way of amendment. We consider that insufficient regard was paid to these factors.”

Accordingly, the amendment was allowed, and the case was remitted for a fresh hearing.

Technorati Tags: Employment Appeal Tribunal, Racial Discrimination, Relabeling Case, Unfair Dismissal