Morris v London Iron and Steel Co Ltd: CA 1988

The applicant claimed before an industrial tribunal that he had been unfairly dismissed. His former employer alleged that, instead of being dismissed, he had resigned. The tribunal rehearsed the rival evidence of dismissal and resignation, found that the probabilities were equally balanced and dismissed the application on the basis that the applicant had not discharged the burden of proof.
Held: The tribunal was correct: ‘in the exceptional case’ a judge confronted with an issue of fact might be in breach of his judicial duty to do other than to resort to the burden of proof. He rejected a submission that the tribunal ‘should have set out in much greater detail than it did its findings on other facts, its reasoning, its analysis of those facts, where that analysis had led it, and why in the end it found that it was unable to reach a conclusion one way or the other.’
The purpose of the reasons was to tell the parties in broad terms why they had lost and won and to provide them with the materials which would enable them to know that it had made no error of law in reaching its findings of fact. There was no reason why, in the simple circumstances of that claim, the tribunal was obliged to provide any more detailed analysis of its reasoning than it had given.

Judges:

May LJ, Sir Denys Buckley

Citations:

[1988] QB 493, [1987] 2 All ER 496, [1987] 3 WLR 836

Jurisdiction:

England and Wales

Employment, Litigation Practice

Updated: 30 April 2022; Ref: scu.226017