Appeal No.	 EAT/654/99

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

	At the Tribunal
	On 18 October 1999

Before
HIS HONOUR JUDGE J HICKS QC
MR A D TUFFIN CBE
PROFESSOR P D WICKENS OBE

HULL & EAST RIDING RACE EQUALITY COUNCIL	APPELLANT

MS J ORAKA AND MS M SOUTHWICK	RESPONDENTS

Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

PRELIMINARY HEARING

Revised

	APPEARANCES

The Appellant neither present nor represented		

JUDGE HICKS:
1	Ms Oraka and Ms Southwick were employed by the Hull & East Riding Race Equality Council and brought complaints to the Employment Tribunal of sex discrimination.  The Tribunal, after reciting the facts at substantial length and with great care, reached the conclusion that there had been the sexual discrimination alleged and upheld the complaints.  The Hull & East Riding Race Equality Council appeals.  

2	The grounds of appeal are first that the decision was perverse in that no reasonable Tribunal could have held that discrimination had occurred, given the Tribunal’s findings of fact,  and secondly that the Tribunal misdirected themselves in applying an irrelevant law to their findings of fact, particularly in relation to the judgement of  the  House of Lords in  Zafar V Glasgow City Council [1988] IRLR 36.  Some further and better particulars are given of those grounds of appeal but the grounds themselves encapsulate the appellant’s case.  

3	The appellants do not appear at this preliminary hearing and are not represented, but we nevertheless have to consider whether any arguable ground of appeal is shown which should go forward to a full hearing.  The first ground of perversity is essentially a matter of first impression we have all read the papers and we are quite satisfied there is no perversity in the sense alleged in the notice of appeal.  We dismiss that ground.

4	The second ground attacks the Tribunal’s treatment of the law.  We have carefully considered the way in which the Tribunal approached the task before it and we see no error of law in that approach.  We therefore dismiss the appeal on that ground also.

5	The appeal is therefore entirely dismissed at this stage.