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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Shahnazar v Level 20 Ltd [1997] UKEAT 1308_97_0112 (1 December 1997) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1997/1308_97_0112.html Cite as: [1997] UKEAT 1308_97_0112, [1997] UKEAT 1308_97_112

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APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	APPELLANT IN PERSON
For the Respondents	NO ATTENDANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF RESPONDENTS


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): I am now going to give a very short judgment. Mr Shahnazar appeals against a decision of an Industrial Tribunal refusing his application for an adjournment. The case concerns his application for breach of contract, unfair dismissal and unlawful deduction from wages. That complaint was made in an IT1 dated 28 August 1997.

The employers filed their IT3, which is their response to that application, which was presented to the Industrial Tribunal on 21 October 1997. In the normal course of events, a date was fixed for the hearing and the hearing date fixed is ultimately tomorrow 2nd December.

The application for an adjournment having been refused, Mr Shahnazar appeals to this Court. The grounds on which he says that the interests of justice require an adjournment are firstly, that he is now unrepresented and that he feels incapable of conducting his own case. He wants an adjournment therefore to enable himself to acquire proper representation. His previous solicitors having recently dropped out of the picture. He says, secondly, that his solicitors had told him that there were certain documents which he would need from the Respondent company to pursue his complaint. He says that until that documentation has been provided, justice cannot properly be done to the complaints that he has made.

The case, as I have indicated, is due for hearing tomorrow. The Respondents have responded to the appeal by indicating that they intend to call four witnesses, two of whom are not ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom, one of whom, apparently, is going to leave the United Kingdom just before Christmas.

Questions as to adjournments are best left to Industrial Tribunals unless there is a real risk of injustice being done between the parties. Here, as it seems to us, Mr Shahnazar is in a position to put forward to the Industrial Tribunal tomorrow, precisely the same arguments as he has presented to us, in favour of the substantive hearing not taking place tomorrow. It will be for the Industrial Tribunal to consider any oral application that he might make at the start of proceedings tomorrow and the Tribunal will be in a position then to see whether justice can fully be done between the parties, if the hearing was to go ahead.

Accordingly, it would be wrong at this time for us to express any view as to the merits of Mr Shahnazar's position. That may require a little examination by the Industrial Tribunal of the facts and circumstances relating to the case itself, so far as concerns the documentation to which I have referred.

Accordingly this is not an appeal which we consider we should allow in the circumstances, because as we have indicated, Mr Shahnazar is in a position to make an oral application to the Industrial Tribunal first thing tomorrow, if he is so minded. For those reasons the appeal will be dismissed.