EAT PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE
Application/claim
Case management
The ET1 in both cases was settled by the same firm of solicitors. The ET1 in one case ran to 27 pages. The other was also extremely long. An Employment Judge gave a direction in each case that the Claimant should reduce their ET1 to one side of A4 paper. The Appellants objected that this would require them to omit claims and other important material.
The Particulars of Claim seem to have been witness statements. Such a practice is not helpful and does not further the overriding objective. The ET Rules state what should be in an ET1. Parties need to specify the claims they are making: Chapman v Simon. Without being prescriptive, the essentials to be pleaded are likely to be: (1) the legal basis for the claim: unfair dismissal, direct race discrimination etc; (2) what the act or omission complained of was; (3) who carried out the act; (4) when the act or omission complained of occurred; (5) why complaint is made of the act/omission; (6) anything affecting remedy.
It is an error of law/perverse for an EJ to limit what there is in an ET1. If some paragraphs set out irrelevant matters or are embarrassing (in the legal sense) to plead to, there could be an application to strike out the offending paragraphs. At the end of a hearing question of costs may arise if the ET1 (or 3) is unreasonably prolix leading to waste of costs. The appropriate way of dealing with prolix pleadings is by identifying issues at a case management discussion (see Mummery LJ in Hendricks at para 53). The issues must not be over elaborate or numerous (Mummery LJ in St Christopher’s Fellowship v Walters-Ennis [2012] EWCA Civ 921). Appeals allowed; directions given for CMDs.
Judges:
Slade DBE J
Citations:
[2012] UKEAT 0140 – 12 – 2003
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 31 October 2022; Ref: scu.459914
