Got the respondent's response - questions!!

[stinkysrevenge]

hi all, bit of a long one, please bear with me....

 

I filed for tribunal against my previous company on an unfair dismissal basis. I have received their response, however, it is incomplete. There are duplicate and obviously missing pages, hence some of the points in my claim are not answered.

 

Called the tribunal office to query this (just to make sure it wasn't a copying error on their end) and they have the exact same pages I do. They have advised that I should contact my old company for their completed response.

 

My questions are:

1) Why should I chase the response when it should be (I feel) the tribunal's responsibility?

2) Would this not constitute a late response by the respondent as the complete response has not been submitted by the deadline?

3) Theoretically, if the tribunal were to accept a late, yet completed response by the respondent, would that be fair? And in that case, would I not have a case to say if the company can go back and amend their submission after the deadline, should I not be able to amend my claim if there was anything I wanted to add?

4) Can I push for a pre-hearing to get their non-complete response thrown out and a default judgement issued? They are pushing for a pre-hearing review and looking to claim for costs from me on the basis that my claim is unfounded? (Which it SO is not.)

 

Ironically enough, one of my main points of the claim was their inability to follow procedure, which they have once again failed to do.

 

Any light anyone could shed would be fab!! Many thanks in advance....

[elpulpo]

I agree about 1). Surely the tribunal should be chasing this up?

 

With regard to 2) & 3) -

As I understand it, tribunals are notoriously lenient on respondants being late with response.

Worth a punt though. Just respond by saying 'Yeh! I'd love a PHR, so I can point out to the tribunal your failures so far'.

 

Again, as I understand it, requests for PHR, and the old 'application for costs' chestnut are seemingly now standard practice.

Costs are awarded in a tiny proportion of cases (about 3%?), so unless you really are talking cobblers and you know it, I wouldn't worry.

 

Has the ET response been completed by the employer or solicitor?

 

What sort of size is your former employer? HR Dept?

[stinkysrevenge]

hi elpulpo, many thanks for your quick reply!

 

It's just irritating that they would get a second chance at a response, just smacks of being unfair to me.

 

The response was completed by one of the directors of the company. They did have an outsourced HR company, so no HR on site as it were, but it doesn't look like they've had anything to do with the response.

 

They are a small company, but part of a much larger plc, (in the same building) so they have resources available to them.

[stinkysrevenge]

bump

[robbond55]

Any updates with the tribunal yet?

[stinkysrevenge]

Hi all, update on the tribunal is that it never happened unfortunately. In the end it was my diagnosis of cancer that tipped me over the edge. I had to pull out in order to start medical treatment and couldn't mentally deal with the stress from the tribunal on top of that, so I had to cut something out (and the cancer wasn't going to go on it's own) so I dropped my claim. I would have loved to go to tribunal and feel they did get off easy, but making the choice between continuing with a tribunal or my life was no decision really. But thanks to everyone for all their advice and support, it means a lot.

[Bigredbus]

We all wish you all the best... and well done, anyway, for starting your claim...

 

Get better very soon...