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United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Ansar v Lloyds TSB Bank Plc & Ors [2006] UKEAT 0609_05_0803 (8 March 2006) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2006/0609_05_0803.html Cite as: [2006] UKEAT 0609_05_0803, [2006] UKEAT 609_5_803 |
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At the Tribunal | |
Before
HIS HONOUR JUDGE McMULLEN QC
MR J R RIVERS CBE
MR H SINGH
APPELLANT | |
LLOYDS TSB FINANCIAL SERVICES LTD MS L MOODY MS T DAVIES |
RESPONDENT |
Transcript of Proceedings
JUDGMENT
For the Appellant | MR MOHAMMED ANSAR (The Appellant in Person) |
For the Respondents | MR JONATHAN GIDNEY (of Counsel) Instructed by: Messrs Pinsents Masons Solicitors Dashwood House 69 Old Broad Street London EC2M 1NR |
SUMMARY
Practice & Procedure: Bias, Misconduct and Procedural Irregularity
This case alleges bias at a PHR conducted by a Chairman in a second claim where allegations of bias are outstanding from his handling of the first claim. Vacated and bolted to a now-sifted FH in the first claim. Breeze Benton, Dobbs v Triodos Bank, Deman v The AUT and Hackney v Sagnia on recusal and bias to be considered. The legal principles for the hearing agreed and guidance given.
HIS HONOUR JUDGE McMULLEN QC
a. there were personal friendship or animosity between the judge and any member of the public involved in the case; or
b. the judge were closely acquainted with any member of the public involved in the case, particularly if the credibility of that individual could be significant in the decision of the case; or,
c. in a case where the credibility of any individual were an issue to be decided by the judge, the judged had in a previous case rejected the evidence of that person in such outspoken terms as to throw doubt on his ability to approach such person's evidence with an open mind on any later occasion; or,
d. on any question at issue in the proceedings before him the judge had expressed views, particularly in the course of the hearing, in such extreme and unbalanced terms as to throw doubt on their ability to try the issue with an objective judicial mind; or,
e. for any other reason, there were real grounds for doubting the ability of the judge to ignore extraneous considerations, prejudices and predilections and bring an objective judgment to bear on the issues.
11.6.2 The EAT recognises that Chairmen and Employment Tribunals are themselves obliged to observe the overriding objective and are given wide powers and duties of case management (see Employment Tribunal (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2004 (SI No 1861), so appeals in respect of their conduct of Employment Tribunals, which is in exercise of those powers and duties, are the less likely to succeed.
11.6.3 Unsuccessful pursuit of an allegation of bias or improper conduct, particularly in respect of case management decisions, may put the party raising it at risk of an order for costs.
Allegations of bias against employment tribunals are raised as grounds of appeal to this tribunal with what appears to be increasing frequency. They are most commonly made by litigants in person, often with little or nothing by way of tangible support for the complaint, which on analysis commonly amounts to no more than the deployment of the fallacious proposition that: (i) I ought to have won; (ii) I lost; (iii) therefore the tribunal was biased. Our experience is that bias allegations based on complaints that the employment tribunal approached the appellant's case with a closed mind, having already pre-determined the matter against the appellant, have a low success rate. This is for the obvious reason that a tribunal cannot form a concluded view on the issues until it has heard all the evidence and the argument and so it will be a rare case in which a tribunal will at any earlier stage make any utterances which either side can rationally regard as the outward expression of some pre-judgment of the case.