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The Court of Appeal (CA) upheld an ET decision where it had quoted an untraceable and unreported cases to back up its decision. As the decision itself was basically sound and the cases only used by the ET to support its decision, the CA believed there was no reason to have a new ET retry the case (as did the EAT before it). The implication was that if the above cited cases had indeed been important then that would have been important when deciding for re-hearing the case. | ||
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The Court of Appeal (CA) upheld an ET decision (as did the EAT) that a former director did not work the statutory minimum of one year for claiming unfair dismissal. The appeal to the CA argued that the tribunal's reasoning on the issue was undermined by the citation of untraceable authorities in its reasons for the decision (only one case quoted by the ET was actually untraceable, but unreported cases had been referred to by the tribunal without it having providing citations or references in the judgment). Whilst the CA criticised the employment tribunal for having departed from the obligation of judicial tribunals to “give reasons which are candid, intelligible, transparent and coherent”, it found that the ET had not been mistaken in reaching its verdict, especially as the untraceable cases were not central in the tribunal's coming to its decision. A previous CA case ( Stanley Cole v Sheridan [2003] ) was quoted where it was decided that, “while there is no universal test of procedural irregularity, a tribunal's determination is not vitiated by reference to uncanvassed authorities if these have not been central to and influential in the eventual decision” ( meaning here that as the cases quoted by the ET were only being used to add greater weight for the accepted notion that when deciding whether a particular employment relationship amounts to a contract of employment, the entire picture must be taken into account. The CA regretted that the appeal had not included the questioning of the jurisdictional right of the ET to involve itself in deciding whether the claimant had worked a full year as both the claimant and respondent had accepted that the claimant had worked the required length of time. The CA argued that normally a tribunal will only involve itself in deciding this if the parties disagree as to whether the minimum of a year's employment was fulfilled, and indicated that the ET had thereby exceeded its powers, “There may be no jurisdictional issue permitting intervention of the tribunal” (Carter v Ahsan [2007] UKHL 51 was quoted by the CA in support of this limit of the tribunal's jurisdiction).
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