Appeal No. PA/336/93

	EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
	58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

		At the Tribunal
		On 23 July 1993

	Before

	THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE KNOX

	AS IN CHAMBERS

MRS E MENSAH	APPELLANT

EAST BERKSHIRE HEALTH AUTHORITY	RESPONDENTS

	Transcript of Proceedings

	JUDGMENT

Revised

	APPEARANCES

For the Appellant	IN PERSON

For the Respondents	NO APPEARANCE BY
	OR REPRESENTATION ON 
BEHALF OF THE
RESPONDENT

	MR JUSTICE KNOX:  This is strictly speaking a Review by me of the refusal by Deputy Registrar Anderson in this Tribunal on 27 May 1993 to extend time for an appeal which was lodged on 14 April 1993 from the decision of the Chairman of Industrial Tribunals on 17 February of this year not to review a decision of the Industrial Tribunal at Reading as long ago as 26 September 1979.   

	The narrow point before me today is whether I should extend time for an appeal from that refusal of a Review by the Chairman of the Industrial Tribunal.  It was out of time.  Fortytwo days are allowed under the Rules.  The appeal was lodged on 14 April 1993 and time was up on 31 March or 1 April so that it was a fortnight out of time.  However, I have thought it desirable because Mrs Mensah obviously suffers from a feeling that she has been denied justice over the years to have a look a little beyond the narrow question whether I should extend time for an appeal from the Chairman of the Industrial Tribunal's refusal of a Review and I therefore looked at his reasons for refusing the Review.

	He gave three reasons for refusing the Review and they are based on the time span that has in fact occurred.  There was an event when Mrs Mensah was a midwife in 1976 in respect of which it was said that she had been guilty of professional shortcomings.  There were proceedings in relation to her status and she was taken off the Midwives Roll in 1977/78 and that led to her employment by the Health Authority being terminated and that was the subject of the hearing before the Industrial Tribunal in Reading in September 1979 and on that occasion the Industrial Tribunal dismissed her application for unfair dismissal.

	She launched an appeal with this Tribunal, the Employment Appeal Tribunal but the Notice of Appeal was considered by the Registrar of this Tribunal not to disclose an arguable point of law and he wrote a letter saying so on 13 December 1979, pursuant to Rule 3 of the Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules saying that as it stood then he proposed to take no further action on it because no arguable point of law was disclosed.

	Mrs Mensah then wrote another lengthy piece stating her case about the medical aspects of the matter and submitted that to this Tribunal but that did not persuade the Registrar of this Tribunal that an arguable point of law had been raised any more than the first Notice of Appeal had done and he expressed that view on 9 January 1980 and finished up in his letter saying:

		"I regret therefore to say that the Appeal Tribunal does not have jurisdiction to entertain your fresh appeal and that, in accordance with Rule 3(2)  of the Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules 1976, no further action will be taken on it."

There matters rested and have indeed rested for a very long time.  There was no appeal from that decision.

	Mrs Mensah tells me today that she found a pharmacist who agreed with her view of the matter in 1983 and that there have been various impediments to her prosecuting her case to get the decisions either of the Central Midwives Board or its successors reversed or the decision of the Industrial Tribunal that she had not been unfairly dismissed reversed.  But of course the fact of the matter remains that there has been even since she got her favourable evidence available to her, a delay of ten years.  Now the time limits in relation to prosecuting appeals are measured in days not in years.  The time limit for an appeal to this Tribunal is fortytwo days from the perfection of an Order of an Industrial Tribunal and it is in that context that one looks at the Chairman's decision not to review the decision in September 1979.  His three reasons were first that it was hopelessly out of time and I need not elaborate that; secondly he said that even if he could be persuaded that new evidence had come to light the Applicant must have acted speedily in relation thereto and the only document he had was dated 3 June 1983 which was then well over nine years ago.  That fits with what Mrs Mensah told me today about the pharmacist who supported her case whom she said she had available in 1983.  Thirdly the Chairman expressed a view that the application was misconceived because Mrs Mensah's name was removed from the roll and on that basis her employer had no choice but to dismiss her for that was what the law required.

	Mrs Mensah does not accept that it was right to take her off the Midwives Roll and that is an issue which I have no jursidiction or indeed ability to express a view upon and I do not say anything about that aspect of the matter.  What I have to deal with is the question whether there is a reasonable excuse for the enormous delay that has occurred in this case and although it may be that one should have sympathy with Mrs Mensah in the predicament with which she has found herself, there is nothing that could possibly compensate for delays of this scale and I therefore formally do not reverse the decision by Deputy Registrar Anderson. Substantively I am saying that there really is not any ground for upsetting what the Chairman of the Industrial Tribunal decided when he refused a Review.