EAT Appeal from Registrar’s Order – whether the appeal was in time
The appeal raised two questions:
(1) Whether the Employment Tribunal’s re-issue of the Judgment under a certificate of correction meant that time began to run from the when the re-issued Judgment was sent out? If so, the appeal had been served in time.
If not;
(2) Whether the Claimant’s appeal was validly served in time by his representative having provided supporting documentation by means of an emailed link to a Dropbox zip file?
Held:
Dismissing the appeal.
The correction of a typographical error under Rule 69 ET Rules 2013 did not give rise to a new date from which the time for an appeal would start to run; it would not do so unless there was a substantive change to the Judgment (Aziz-Mir v Sainsbury’s Supermarket plc UKEATPA/ 0537/06). This point was made plain by the certificate of correction and the Claimant can have been under no misapprehension about this.
The documentation that was required to be served to validly institute an appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT Rules 1993, Rule 3(1)) was clearly set out. Along with the Notice of Appeal, this documentation had to be ‘served’ within the requisite time period (Kanapathiar v London Borough of Harrow [2003] IRLR 571 EAT; O’Cathail v Transport for London [2012] IRLR 1011 CA). The Practice Direction made plain that it had to be ‘attached’ (paragraph 3.1). Guidance as to how this might be done (including by email) was set out in the EAT guidance leaflet T440. ‘Service’ by email was achieved when the email and requisite documentation ‘hit’ the EAT server (Patel v South Tyneside Council and Ors UKEATPA/0917/11). As the guidance made clear, that was not achieved by Dropbox link, which did not ‘serve’ the documentation on the EAT but, rather, provided a link to another location where that documentation could be found.
Eady QC HHJ
[2015] UKEAT 0157 – 15 – 2509, [2016] ICR D5
Bailii
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 17 January 2022; Ref: scu.565075
