Appeal No.	 EAT/0951/01

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

	At the Tribunal
	On 30 October 2001

Before
HIS HONOUR JUDGE J R REID QC
MR P R A JACQUES CBE
MR J C SHRIGLEY

API TENZA LTD	APPELLANT

MR G M ROBERTSON	RESPONDENT

Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

PRELIMINARY HEARING EX PARTE

Revised

	APPEARANCES

For the Appellant	MICHAEL LANE
(of Counsel)
instructed by
Messrs Birkett Long Solicitors
Essex House
42 Crouch Street
Colchester
CO3 3HH	

HIS HONOUR JUDGE J R REID QC

1	This is a Preliminary Hearing of an appeal by API Tenza Limited against a decision of an Employment Tribunal held at Bury St Edmunds on 2 May and 12 June 2001.  The decision was promulgated on 25 June 2001.  By the decision the Tribunal held that Mr Robertson had been unfairly dismissed by the Appellant, and that the Appellant was in breach of his contract of employment.  The Tribunal adjourned the matter for a remedy hearing to be held at Bury St Edmunds at a later date.

2	The basis of the appeal, putting it very briefly, is that the Tribunal substituted its own judgment as to what the reasonable result would have been, for the judgment of the disciplinary tribunal of the employer and that in doing so it was wrong in law.  There is also a subsidiary complaint that a number of the factual issues on which the Tribunal relied in making its finding that the penalty of dismissal was not within the reasonable band of responses were erroneously made through either misunderstanding evidence or simply through misreading documents before them.

3	In our view there is enough here to go to a Full Hearing.  The fact that we allow it to go to a Full Hearing does not by any means indicate that the Appellant will succeed at the Full Hearing as I am sure the Appellant understands.