Appeals: New points and perversity

The Court of Appeal has, in part, overturned the decision of the EAT in Unison v Leicestershire City Council. See bulletin of 29/5/05 for the EAT's decision.

This case is authority for the propositions that:

• the fact that a case is of very large value or involves a complex and important point of law is not, without more, an 'exceptional' circumstance allowing a party to raise a new point of law on appeal which had not been raised before the employment tribunal. What is required is something akin to "a pressing public interest" (para. 21)
• the Employment Appeal Tribunal is not permitted to interfere with fact-sensitive assessments, such as the number of days' pay for a protective award (where the EAT reduced it from 20 to 10), unless the tribunal's assessment is plainly wrong in law or otherwise perverse (para. 34).

Unison v Leicestershire County Council