Mauritius Shipping Corporation Ltd v Employment Relations Tribunal and Others
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Lady Black |
| Judgment Date | 21 November 2019 |
| Neutral Citation | [2019] UKPC 42 |
| Date | 21 November 2019 |
| Docket Number | Privy Council Appeal No 0052 of 2018 |
| Court | Privy Council |
[2019] UKPC 42
Privy Council
Michaelmas Term
From the Supreme Court of Mauritius
Lord Kerr
Lord Hodge
Lady Black
Lord Briggs
Lord Kitchin
Privy Council Appeal No 0052 of 2018
Appellant
James Guthrie QC
(Instructed by AxiomStone Solicitors)
Respondent
Hafsah Masood
(Instructed by Royds Withy King LLP (London))
First Co-Respondent
Shakeel Mohamed
Ameerah Dhunnoo
(Instructed by Geeteshwaree Kissoon (Mauritius))
2 nd – 11 th Co-Respondents
Vimalen Reddi
Ashvan Luckraz
(Instructed by Ayesha Jeewa (Mauritius))
Heard on 15 October 2019
The appellant is a private limited company, incorporated in 1986, and owned by the Government of Mauritius. Between November 2015 and January 2016, it made redundant a number of employees, including the 11 co-respondents in these proceedings. This appeal arises from the litigation that followed upon those redundancies.
Upon being informed of the decision to make them redundant, the co-respondents registered complaints with the Permanent Secretary, as they were entitled to do under section 39B of the Employment Rights Act 2008 (“the Act”), which makes provision concerning the reduction, by an employer, of the number of workers in his employment. The Permanent Secretary referred the matter to the Employment Promotion and Protection Division of the Employment Relations Tribunal (“the Tribunal”), the first respondent in these proceedings.
The Tribunal found that the appellant's reduction of its workforce, and in particular the termination of the employment of the co-respondents, was unjustified and, on 9 May 2016, ordered the appellant to pay severance allowance to the co-respondents.
The appellant sought to challenge the Tribunal's decision by judicial review, lodging its application for leave to apply for judicial review on 20 July 2016. The Supreme Court heard the application in November 2016 and, by a judgment dated 21 August 2017, refused leave. It was not persuaded that the grounds of challenge that the appellant wished to advance were arguable. But it also refused leave on the quite separate ground that the application had not been made sufficiently promptly, with no reasons for this lack of expedition having been advanced.
The appellant appeals as of right to the Board, challenging both the Supreme Court's decision that it had failed to launch proceedings sufficiently promptly (“the promptness issue”) and its decision that the proposed judicial review case was not arguable.
Having had the advantage of reading the parties' written cases in advance of the hearing, the Board determined that it would be appropriate to commence with oral argument from all sides on the promptness issue. Following oral argument on this issue, the Board deliberated and concluded that the Supreme Court had been entitled to hold that the appellant had failed to launch its proposed application for judicial review sufficiently promptly, and therefore to refuse to give leave for it to proceed. This meant that the appeal to the Board must inevitably be dismissed, rendering it unnecessary to rule upon the appellant's challenge to the Supreme Court's determination that the proposed judicial review was not arguable. The parties were informed immediately of the Board's decision, and short oral reasons were given for it. The purpose of this judgment is to amplify those short reasons.
An application for judicial review must be made promptly, and in any event within three months from the date when the grounds for the application first arose. The Supreme Court cited, in this regard, the cases of Karamuth v Universal Hotels Ltd [1992] SCJ 420, Bagha v The Public Service Commission [1996] SCJ 146 and Securiclean (Mauritius) Ltd v The Ministry of Local Government & Outer Islands [2015] SCJ 327.
It is important to bear in mind that an applicant cannot rely upon having three months in which to launch a judicial review application. The primary requirement is that the application be made promptly. The requirement that it be made in any event within three months is a “longstop”. It is well established, and the appellant accepts, that, depending on the circumstances of the case, an application made within three months may not qualify as having been made promptly, in which case, leave to...
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Takeisha Clairmont v The Minister of Health
...that the requirement is for promptness and the three (3) month time limit is a mere ‘longstop’: see Mauritius Shipping Corporation Ltd v Employment Relations Tribunal and others [2020] 1 All ER 844 at paragraphs [7] to 13 This approach was explained by Wilson R. Huhn in Teaching Legal Anal......
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C-Care (Mauritius) Ltd v Employment Relations Tribunal and 5 others
...months does not satisfy this requirement, leave for the claim to be brought is liable to be refused: see, eg, Mauritius Shipping Corporation Ltd v Employment Relations Tribunal [2019] UKPC 42; [2020] 1 All ER 844 (“ Mauritius Shipping Corporation”), para 11 The term “promptly” requires an......