by Naomi Cunningham & Michael Reed
One of the types of order that the tribunal can make is an ‘unless order’. This is an order in the form: “Unless you do that, this will happen”.
For example, the tribunal may order “Unless the Claimant discloses all the document on which he intends to rely by the 1st May, his claim will be struck out”.
Unless orders are usually made when a party has failed to comply with previous orders. They are a way of the tribunal saying “This is your last chance. Sort this out, or else.”
I’m running the London Marathon on Sunday. Partly for fun, but I’m also raising money for the Free Representation Unit.
FRU is charity that provides representation to people who can’t afford to pay lawyers. In the last year we’ve helped 700 people, about 300 in employment tribunals. I work there as Legal Officer.
If you’d like to help, donations can be made through Just Giving. Any contribution you would like to give would be very welcome and will be put to good use.
Written submissions are a useful advocacy tool, but it is not always clear when they should be used.
This is an area where personal style and preference matter quite a lot. Both authors use written submissions a lot. Other advocates use them less. But, bearing that in mind, here are some guidelines:
There’s quite a common belief that employment tribunals don’t award compensation for future loss beyond 3 or 6 months. Other things being equal, this isn’t…
In general, arguments don’t gain anything by being repeated. This is particularly true in inter-parties correspondence.
This does not prevent people writing essentially the same letter more than once. This can, and does, reach ridiculous proportions.
Cases aren’t won by boring the tribunal into submission, so try not to raise more grievances than you need to to found your claim.
One of the first things you will do when you arrive at the tribunal is size up the opposition. This is part of human nature – and potentially useful: you want to know what you’re up against. Your opponent’s choice of hot drink is a key ‘tell’ which it is essential that you learn to read.
2004 was a good year for bad ideas in the employment litigation field. One of the minor bits of foolishness was to limit the involvement…
We’ve added a Resources page to the site that gives information about other useful information.