Appeal No.	 EAT/721/99

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

	At the Tribunal
	On 24 November 1999

Before
HIS HONOUR JUDGE A WILKIE QC
DR D GRIEVES CBE
MR P R A JACQUES CBE

MR I MOHAMMED	APPELLANT

(1) EUROPEAN RETAIL LTD 	RESPONDENTS
(2) MR K LALANI

Transcript of Proceedings

PRELIMINARY HEARING

Revised

	APPEARANCES

For the Appellant	THE APPELLANT NEITHER PRESENT NOR REPRESENTED	

		JUDGE WILKIE: 	This is the hearing of an appeal brought by Mr Mohammed against a decision of the Employment Tribunal sitting at North London which dismissed his complaints of race discrimination and breach of contract.  The decision was dated 21st April 1999, the hearing having taken place on 23rd, 24th and 25th March.  Mr Mohammed submitted a Notice of Appeal dated 2nd June, being a hand written document running to some 13 substantive pages.  

2.	Prior to that appeal and indeed prior to the reserved decision, Mr Mohammed had on the 2nd April written a letter to the Regional Chairman of the Employment Tribunal’s which runs to some seven pages in which he made complaints about the bias of the Chairman and, it would appear, one of his wing members.  In his Notice of Appeal, Mr Mohammed again repeated his allegations of bias and made a whole series of allegations of procedural impropriety against the Chairman as part of wide ranging attack on the findings of the Tribunal and the way in which it had gone about its decision.  

3.	On the 26th May, the Regional Chairman responded to the letter of 2nd April rejecting this complaint.  On the 16th July, Mr Mohammed swore an Affidavit which runs to some 11 pages in which he repeated the allegations of bias and procedural impropriety against the Chairman and attacked the decision of the Tribunal.  The Notice of Appeal and the Affidavit in support as well as his letter to the Regional Chairman were all placed before the Chairman of the Employment Tribunal in question by the Registrar of this Tribunal and on the 6th October, the Chairman responded to the various allegations made, point by point, in a letter comprising seven pages.  This hearing of the appeal is by way of a preliminary hearing, and the task we have to perform is to decide whether there is any reasonably arguable ground of appeal which ought to go before a full hearing of this Tribunal, or whether, in the absence of any reasonably arguable point on appeal, this appeal should be dismissed today.  

4.	Mr Mohammed has not appeared before us.  The Tribunal has received a fax of today’s date, apparently from his new employers, Patel and Shah, or at any rate, from that source which arrived early this morning.  In that letter Mr Mohammed requests a postponement of, or an adjournment of, today’s hearing because he says that he is insufficiently prepared to present a case worth hearing  Moreover, he says, 

“I have been unable to lodge copies of my skeleton arguments and copies of other papers I intend to use in Court”.  

5.	He mentions that in anticipation of a Notice of Hearing, he had moved his annual leave as far back as his new employer would allow but he finally took that leave in October.  Having returned on Wednesday the 17th November from that holiday, he saw the notice of this hearing in the mail.  He concludes by saying:-

“It is my intention to be heard on the appeal and I would be grateful if the Court would look kindly on this disruption of its work and grant me another opportunity to be heard”.

6.	We have considered carefully whether to allow Mr Mohammed an adjournment in the circumstances which he has set out in his letter and we have decided that we should not.  Mr Mohammed has, as we have indicated, written at considerable length on a number of occasions setting out the reasons for his feeling aggrieved at the decision of the Employment Tribunal.  Those documents contain a broad sweep of allegations which are made consistently by Mr Mohammed.  

7.	We therefore feel that we are in a position to know extremely well and in detail what it is that Mr Mohammed complains of in this Tribunal decision and in the conduct of the hearing of his application before it.  In our judgement, there is little more that Mr Mohammed could say to advance his appeal which he has not already said and which would not simply constitute a repetition of what he has already said.  Each of us has looked through these documents with great care in order to identify the points in issue.  

8.	Therefore, Mr Mohammed having been given Notice of this hearing and having put forward no good reason for his non-attendance, we have decided to consider this case on the documentation which is before us.  The Tribunal decision was to the effect that, in the circumstances described by it and on the basis of findings of fact made by it, Mr Mohammed was dismissed from his employment by the Respondent for reasons other than reasons of racial discrimination.   The Tribunal found that the reason for his dismissal related to his conduct, namely his failure, poor work record and his unwillingness to accept constructive criticism and advice on how to improve his performance.  This was despite there having been some expressions of concern in the past about his conduct as manager of the particular store which he was employed to manage.  During the period of the Appellant’s absence on holiday between the 7th and 27th April, a relief manager having been brought in, the full extent of his mismanagement of the store was brought to the Respondents attention by that relief manager and as a consequence, he was dismissed.

9.	The Tribunal, therefore rejected his contention that his dismissal was set up in order to provide a berth for Mr Dutt who was available to be employed such that his dismissal was by reason of racial discrimination on the grounds that Mr Dutt was Asian, whereas Mr Mohammed is African.  

10.	That conclusion was something which, in our judgment, the Tribunal was entitled to come to on the evidence which was before it.  In considering the question of racial discrimination the Tribunal applied itself to the correct statutory provisions and its approach took into account the leading authorities on the matter to which it referred explicitly in paragraph 10 of its decision.  It recorded what Mr Mohammed’s submissions were and it rejected those submissions for the reasons which it set out in paragraph 13(1) of its decision.  In our judgment there is nothing in the Tribunal’s setting out of its conclusions which can possibly be characterised an error of law or a perverse decision.  There were also claims for a breach of contract.  Those matters also were dealt with in paragraph 13 on the basis of the evidence received by the Tribunal and, in our judgement, on a correct application of the law.  

11.	The real thrust of Mr Mohammed’s appeal, however, is that throughout the hearing the Chairman demonstrated his overt hostility to the Appellant and bias in favour of the Respondent.  Very properly those matters have been placed in the form of an Affidavit by Mr Mohammed.  He has gone on oath in support of them.  The Chairman, however, has very seriously and carefully addressed these allegations in his written response to which we have referred.  We have no hesitation whatsoever in accepting the Chairman’s response in all its particulars.  We therefore reject utterly the suggestions by Mr Mohammed that this Chairman acted in any way partially or improperly in the conduct of this hearing.  It therefore follows that, having perused the very extensive documentation in this case and the repeated assertions made by Mr Mohammed we find that there is no reasonably arguable point of law, whether on the basis of an error of law, perversity or bias, raised by Mr Mohammed and therefore we dismiss this appeal at this stage without requiring a full hearing of this appeal.