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Requirement
Attached is an extract from the judgement of charles J in colt group ltd V couchman [2000] C.R 327 .Please address the following specific questions
a) citation
b) Material facts
c)Procedural history
d) Grounds for appeal and reasoning of the court for the judgement given.
Solution
CASE ANALYSIS
COLT GROUP LTD. VS. COUCHMAN [2000]I.C.R. 327
This parties in the case were-
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Appellant- Colt Group Ltd. (respondent before employment tribunal)
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Respondent- Ms. C Couchman
The court was presided over by the Hon’ble Mr. Justice Charles, Mr. I Ezekiel and Mr. S.M. Springer Mbe. The appearances for the parties were-
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Ms. D Romney (for the Appellant)
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Mr. M Kurrein (for the respondent)
This case was heard in the Employment Appeals Tribunal, London and judgement given on 12 January 2000.
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FACTS-
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Colt Group Ltd. was the parent company of a large group companies which had originally provided ventilation equipment. It is now a multinational company which is operating in several countries and has multi-million pound turnover. There are around 40 companies in the group.
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MS. C Couchman was recruited following an advertisement for Secretary to the Trustees of the Colt Foundation and Group Information officer. The beginning of the advertisement stated that Colt Group is a leading international Company that deals with providing ventilation, heating, day lighting and fire protection services throughout U.K. and the world.
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The court was informed that the ‘Colt Group’ as such had no legal entity. The post for which the respondent had been recruited for was combined as both Group Information Officer and Secretary to the Colt Foundation. The applicants employment began on 5 January 1998.
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There was a slight problem with her appointment letter, in that it may not entirely comply with S. 1(3), ERA, 1996 , as the name of the employer had not been specified. Although, if a close look is taken at the appointment letter, the letter head and the reference to ‘Colt Group’ make it apparent that the company was the employer. The applicant also understood the same as she had named the company as her employer in her application.
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The terms and conditions of the employment were in two parts, the first consisted of the letter aforementioned and the other was described as an ‘employment handbook’. This was common to all employees within the group of companies.
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According to her post, Ms. Couchman was responsible for evolving a uniform house style for the entire group which included the international companies. The ethos, terms and conditions arrangements for pensions, a holiday scheme and an IT policy was common for the entire group.
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The employees worked for different companies, for eg., Ms. JW Miller, who signed the appointment letter of Ms. Couchman was an employee of another company, not the respondent company. The applicant works as the Secretary and Group Information Officer for the Trustees of the Colt Foundation which was a charity and also a shareholder in the companies.
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The salaries of the employees of the companies was taken care of by 2 companies, Colt Int. Ltd. and Colt services Ltd. Ms. Couchman conceded that she was paid on behalf of Colt Group Ltd. and that she had signed the letter accepting the terms of Colt Group Ltd.
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A Mr. Turley, on behalf Ms. Couchman conceded that acc. to the evidence provided by Colt Group Ltd., there were 7 employees in the company, and if the 4 non-executive directors and the 6 charity trustees of the Colt Foundation were included in the paradigm, the no. of employees still fell under 20.
HISTORY OF THE CASE-
When Ms. Couchman was dismissed from her job, she decided to bring an application under the Disability Discrimination act, 1995 against Colt Group Ltd. The employment Tribunal firstly considered the question as to whether the claim was excluded under section 7 of the Disability Discrimination Act, 1995 as Colt Group was a company with less than 20 employees. The tribunal held that it had to look behind the Act to the Parliamentary debate on the bill as sec. 7 would create a strange result if it allowed Colt Group to be excluded from its ambit. The tribunal had then held that sec. 7 should not be applied to large groups of companies.
Colt Group appealed.
RELEVANT STATUTORY PROVISIONS
Section 7 of the Disability Discrimination Act, 1995 provides for
“Exemption for small business:
(1) Nothing in this part shall apply in relation to an employer who has fewer than [20] (now 15) employees.
(2) The secretary of state may by order amend subsection (1) by substituting a different number (not more than 20) for the number for the time being specified there.
Section 68, DDA provides for the interpretation of the term ‘employment’- ‘employment means, subject to any prescribed provision, employment under a contract of service or of apprenticeship or a contract personally to do any work, and related expressions are to be interpreted accordingly.’
GROUNDS FOR APPEAL AND REASONING OF THE COURT FOR THE JUDGEMENT GIVEN
Reasoning of the Employment Tribunal-
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Ms. Couchman was connected to the other companies for varied purposes, but this does not make her an employee of those companies. If the parliament had an intention of including associated companies in the section, it would have done so. Section 7 is very clear on that regard.
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In consonance with the decision given in Pepper vs. Hart , the tribunal felt that to take the literal meaning of sec. 7 would lead to absurdities as there is no way that the respondent’s organisation which includes a group of companies with multi-million pound turnover can be called a ‘small business without specialist knowledge’.
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It has also been taken into account that the entire organisation of the group had been done on the basis of synchronization among the group. The applicant herself was both Secretary to trustees of Colt Foundation and the Group Information Officer. She was also in charge of the Group’s corporate image.
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The exact no. of employees in the in the group was also vague and kept on being revised again and again.
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The tribunal decided to take into consideration the decision of the court in Harrods vs. Remick and interpret sec. 7 as including all the employees of the group of companies of which Colt Group is the parent company. Therefore the, the group had more than 20 employees when the applicant was dismissed.
The tribunal paid attention to the ‘heading’ of sec. 7 ‘exemption for small businesses’. The decision of the tribunal was that Colt Group did not have less than 20 employees and hence the tribunal had jurisdiction to try the claim under DDA, 1995 . Taking this decision into consideration, it can be deduced that, for the tribunal, the issue was one of fact, i.e. an issue as to the number of employees that Colt Group has.
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Place Your OrderThe Employment Tribunal described the basis of their decision as ‘a purposive construction’ of sec. 7 of DDA, 1995.
Reasoning of Employment Appeal Tribunal-
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The EAT was of the opinion that a side note of a section is not a credible guide to the meaning and scope of the section as it doesn’t do anything except highlight the subject matter of the section.
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Acc. to the EAT, it was important that the wording of Sec. 7 be taken in context of the DDA as a whole. Also, the EAT was of the opinion that the word ‘employer’ should have the same meaning as in Sec. 4, 6, 7, 16 and 58 of the DDA.
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A literal application of Sec. 7 (1) of the DDA has the result in this case that the DDA does not apply here as the employer had fewer than the specified no. of employees. This conclusion is in consonance with the decision in Hardie vs. CD Northern Ltd. The EAT agrees with this decision.
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Acc. to the EAT, both the reasoning and the conclusion of the tribunal was wrong. Prima facie, the purpose of Sec. 7 of the DDA is to provide that it does not apply to certain employers and their employees. The EAT accepted that the section needs to be interpreted in a narrow manner either literally or purposively. It also concluded that the natural meaning of sec. 7 does not lead to any absurdities.
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The EAT saw nothing absurd in the exemption being defined by reference to the no. of employees in a single company. This approach gets support from the definition of ‘employment’ in sec. 68, DDA which provides that there must be a contract between an employer and his/her employees.
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EAT was of the opinion that the tribunal made a mistake by applying Pepper vs. Hart. EAT took into consideration the passages from Hansard which gave support to the reasoning that the Parliament’s intent was to provide an exemption as to which the correct way was to take each company in a group into consideration separately and see how many employees that company had. In the words of Lord Mackay, “Each individual company within a group is a separate employer.”
The EAT concluded that if the statements of the debate were considered as a whole, they did not anywhere provide a hint of the Parliament’s intent as to the meaning and scope of Sec. 7, DDA. At the very least, they supported the argument of EAT that the natural meaning of the section does not lead to any absurdity and should be applied. It also agreed with the decision in Hardievs. CD Northern Ltd. that it is the decision of the Parliament and not the courts to extend the application of the employment provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act, 1995.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Colt Group Ltd vs Couchman [2000] EAT, ICR (EAT)
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'Employment Rights Act' (1996)1 Statement of initial employment particulars. (3)The statement shall contain particulars of— (a) the names of the employer and employee, (b) the date when the employment began, and (c) the date on which the employee’s period of continuous employment began (taking into account any employment with a previous employer which counts towards that period).
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(Login.westlawindia.com, 2016) accessed 21 April 2016
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Pepper vs Hart [1993] ICR‘reference to Parliamentary material should be permitted as an aid to the construction of legislation which is ambiguous or obscure or the literal meaning of which leads to absurdity’- Lord Browne-Wilkinson
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Harrods vs Remick [1998] ICR 156
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'Disability Discrimination Act' (1995)
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Hardie vs CD Northern Ltd [2000] EAT, IRLR (EAT)
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'Disability Discrimination Bill (Hansard, 15 June 1995)' (Hansard.millbanksystems.com, 2016) accessed 21 April 2016
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'Disability Discrimination: Employees Of Associated Employers Do Not Count Towards Small Businesses Exemption Threshold | Law Reports | Tools | Xperthr.Co.Uk' (Xperthr.co.uk, 2016) accessed 21 April 2016
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