The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) case of Cambridge and Peterborough Foundations NHS Trust v Crouchman has demonstrated an important point on the flexibility of time limits in the light of further information received about a case.

Mr Crouchman was a psychiatric nurse who was dismissed from his job for misconduct. Two days before the three-month time limit for bringing an unfair dismissal claim expired, he was told that his internal appeal against his dismissal had been unsuccessful and that all his arguments had been rejected. On this basis, he decided that there would be no point in taking his case to an employment tribunal.

However, when he received the written judgement on his appeal after the time limit had expired, he found that the situation had not been as bleak as he had originally been led to believe: the internal appeal board had not fully endorsed the dismissal panel’s judgement, and had actually dismissed four of the five charges against him.

He took his claim to the tribunal that same day. The tribunal allowed his case to proceed despite being out of time, as it held that it had not been reasonably practicable for Mr Crouchman to have brought his case until he received the written decision. The Trust appealed.

The Trust held that although Mr Crouchman was entitled to wait until the internal appeal had concluded before deciding whether or not to take his case to the tribunal, the oral decision he was given gave him enough information to make that judgement reasonably.

The appeal was dismissed. The presiding judge identified the central question of the case to be, “where a claimant believes that his claim is not worth pursuing but changes his mind when presented with further information subsequent to the expiry of the of the primary time limit … [can] such a claimant assert that it was in those circumstances not reasonably practicable for him to bring his claim within the limit?”

He summarised the correct approach that must be taken to the question as follows:

• Ignorance of information which is “crucial” or “fundamental” to a claim will make it impracticable for a claimant to present their claim.
• “Crucial” or “fundamental” information is information that, once learned, makes the claimant genuinely and reasonably believe they now have a claim when they did not believe they did before receipt of the information.
• For the claimant’s ignorance of the information to render it “not reasonably practicable” to present their claim, their ignorance must be reasonable and their change of mind in the light of the discovery of the information must also be reasonable.
• The truth of the new facts revealed by the information is not at issue - what matters is that the fact genuinely and reasonably produces the change of belief in the claimant.
• This test must be applied to each point in the unfair dismissal claim: the claim does not pass or fail this test as a whole, but each head must be considered on it own merits, with only those which pass the test being allowed to proceed.

The EAT ruled that the original tribunal had clearly taken this approach and therefore his conclusion must stand. The Trust’s appeal was dismissed and the claim was allowed to proceed.

Technorati Tags: Time Limits, Unfair Dismissal