Majekodunmi v City Facilities Management UK Ltd

Correction of a typographical or other non-substantive error in an Employment Tribunal judgment does not ordinarily restart the time for appealing. Time runs from the original judgment unless the correction is so substantial that it effectively replaces it.

An appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal is validly instituted only when the Notice of Appeal and all prescribed accompanying documents have been served within time. A document is not served or attached by providing a link to a cloud-storage location. The documents themselves must reach the EAT server. An extension of time is exceptional and requires a full and satisfactory explanation for the default.

The Claimant appealed against a Registrar’s order declaring his proposed appeal out of time and refusing an extension. The underlying Employment Tribunal judgment, sent on 13 January 2015, struck out various claims. A certificate of correction sent on 28 January corrected the description of the Claimant’s representative and stated that appeal time limits ran from the original judgment.

The Claimant’s first attempted appeal included the Notice of Appeal and some documents as email attachments, but provided the ET1s and ET3s through a Dropbox link. Those documents were later lodged, ten days out of time. The issues were whether the corrected judgment created a fresh appeal period and whether the Dropbox link validly served the missing documents.

1. Appeal dismissed. The appeal was not validly instituted within the 42-day period, and there were no grounds for extending time.
2. Under Rule 69 of Schedule 1 to the Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2013, the Employment Tribunal corrected only a typographical error. The correction made no substantive change and did not effectively replace the original judgment. The appeal period therefore ran from the original sending-out date, expiring at 4.00 pm on 24 February 2015. The certificate of correction made that position clear.
3. Rule 3(1) of the Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules 1993 and paragraph 3.1 of the EAT Practice Direction required the Notice of Appeal and all prescribed accompanying documents, including the ET1s and ET3s, to be served within the time limit. A document supplied through a Dropbox hyperlink was neither served nor attached. It remained at another cloud location and had not reached the EAT server. The approach in Kanapathiar, O’Cathail and Patel supported strict compliance with these requirements.
4. The Registrar’s treatment of the matter as including an application for an extension of time was appropriate under Rule 37. Applying the approach in Abdelghafar, the Claimant had provided no explanation, still less a good explanation, for failing to resend the documents after the EAT identified the defect while time remained. The exceptional discretion to extend time was therefore not exercised.
5. The court did not determine whether EAT procedures should in future accommodate other forms of electronic document-sharing, including possible security issues. That question did not arise on the way the appeal was argued.

• Employment Tribunal: The Watford Employment Tribunal, sitting on 19 December 2014, struck out various claims. Its judgment was sent on 13 January 2015 and corrected on 28 January 2015.
• Employment Appeal Tribunal: The Registrar ordered on 2 June 2015 that no valid appeal had been lodged in time and refused an extension. The EAT dismissed the appeal.