Badly drawn decision

by Philip

 When a Tribunal crafts its written decision it has to cover 5 bases. These are

) Written reasons for a judgment shall include the following information-

(a) the issues which the tribunal or chairman has identified as being relevant to the claim;

(b) if some identified issues were not determined, what those issues were and why they were not determined;

(c) findings of fact relevant to the issues which have been determined;

(d) a concise statement of the applicable law;

(e) how the relevant findings of fact and applicable law have been applied in order to determine the issues; and

In our experience most decisions not only are elegantly written but also cover the 5 points above. We were interested to read an EAT decision which was scathing less than diplomatic about the written decision of a Tribunal, this is what the EAT had to say,

We are unable to give any coherent account of any of the matters prescribed by rule 30(6) since they have not been recorded at all by the Tribunal. We cannot even give an elementary account of the facts, or of the dispute between the parties. The reasons contain none of the five points identified in the rule. There are unfinished sentences and conditional clauses, (paragraph 7), a mixture of the first person singular and plural so one is unable to tell which is the Chairman’s reflection and that of the Tribunal as a whole. The judgment contains meaningless platitudes. For example, we are told one should not undermine one’s own supervisors; and the general rule at work is that people keep their heads down: see paragraphs 3 and 6. Some conduct, it is said, speaks volumes but we are not told what the conduct is or how it speaks. A series of failures by management is alluded to, but we are not told what they are. A manager, Miss Bruno, is criticised but she does not exist..

We do not know the nature of the employer’s business or of the Claimant’s jobs, nor of the roles played by the actors in this drama…… None of this can be excused.

What brought a wry smile was when the EAT, in allowing the appeal, hinted at what might have been the reason for the rushed, badly thought through and written decision when the EAT said the following:

 

This judgment fell woefully below the standards to be required which are no different on a Friday afternoon in midsummer.

At least some good came out of the case as

The judgment could be utilised as an object lesson of what not to do when writing reasons.

And just in case anyone was in any doubt that this decision was not good, the EAT said,

The judgment in the present case is in a form which would not even have passed muster in the very early days of this jurisdiction, when in 1972 Industrial Tribunals would customarily hear three or four unfair dismissals in a day and give reasons.

Before I slip into meaningless platitudes, I had better get my head down and get back to work on this beautifully sunny mid- Spring day.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 9:41 am and is filed under Employment Tribunal Procedure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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