Authorities — researching the law

Authorities are important court cases which can be used to support a claimant’s case. It is important to research the law and in particular to look for relevant precedents in case law. A good place to start is LRD’s annual publication Law at work www.lrdpublications.org.uk/publications.php?pub=BK&iss=1621 Your local public/university library or citizens advice bureau/law centre may make some employment law texts available, otherwise using online search engines such as Google can be fruitful.

Tribunals will normally only consider cases to which they have been expressly referred. While the judge can be expected to know the main authorities, it can be worth setting out established concepts or using pertinent quotes from the decisions most relevant to your case. Also, using a yellow highlighter to mark relevant passages on a case report, or adding a sidebar line is acceptable, and will be expected in the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

Bear in mind that the headnote of a case (the summary provided by the reporter) while often very useful, does not form part of the judgment. Given time constraints, it usually pays to keep the cases you are referring to, to a minimum. Focus on a small number of decisions which are of particular relevance to the key areas of your case.

As with some other documents multiple copies of the judgments that you wish to rely on must be brought to the tribunal (see Chapter 12 — Hearings). In particular, you will need to provide full case reports, except in the EAT where some cases are so common that copies are made available by court staff www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/tribunals/employment-appeals/familiar-cases.pdf Recent cases can be printed off from the internet at: www.bailii.org website, but for older judgments you may need to photocopy law reports.

Certain key authorities have in the past been frequently included in the bundles of authorities prepared by parties for hearings at the EAT and regularly cited to the Appeal Tribunal. This prompted the adoption of a new arrangement in relation to those frequently cited cases to “avoid unnecessary work for the parties, and avoid overuse of paper and copying resources”.Now copies of these commonly used authorities are available at the Tribunal and a list of the cases is maintained on the website of the Appeal Tribunal. Each EAT courtroom (in London and Edinburgh) is now supplied with sufficient copies of what is known as the Bundle of Familiar Authorities for use by each member of any Appeal Tribunal which is sitting http://www.outertemple.com/userfiles/Documents/EATAuthoritiesbundle.pdf)