ADJ-00009200

Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

A Warehouse Operative

A Food Company

Representatives

Mackay Solicitors

Arthur Cox Solicitors

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under Section 8 of the Unfair Dismissals Act, 1977

CA-00012128-001

26/06/2017

The complainant was dismissed on August 10th 2016 and he submitted his complaint to the WRC on June 26th 2017. His complaint has therefore been submitted more than 10 months after the date of his dismissal and more than the six-month time limit permitted under section 8 of the Unfair Dismissals Act.

Mr Mackay submitted that there is reasonable cause for the delay as the complainant is in constant pain and discomfort from a back injury that he sustained about eight years ago. No medical evidence was submitted to support of this claim.

Conclusion on the Issue of the Time Limit for Submitting a Complaint

The established test for deciding if an extension of time should be granted is set out in the Labour Court case of Cementation Skanska (formerly Kvaerner Cementation) v Carroll, DWT0338. In this case, the test for reasonable cause for extending the time limit to 12 months was set out as follows:

“It is the Court’s view that in considering if reasonable cause exists, it is for the claimant to show that there are reasons which both explain the delay and afford an excuse for the delay. The explanation must be reasonable, that is to say, it must make sense, be agreeable to reason and not be irrational or absurd.   In the context in which the expression reasonable cause appears in the statute it suggests an objective standard, but it must be applied to the facts and circumstances known to the claimant at the material time. The claimant’s failure to present the claim within the six-month time limit must have been due to the reasonable cause relied upon. Hence there must be a causal link between the circumstances cited and the delay and the claimant should satisfy the Court, as a matter of probability, that had those circumstances not been present, he would have initiated the claim in time.”

For an explanation of “reasonable cause” to succeed therefore, the complainant must

§    Explain the delay and afford an excuse for the delay;

§    The explanation must be reasonable;

§    There must be an objective standard, applied to the circumstances of the case;

§    There must be a causal link between the circumstances and the delay;

§    He must show that, if the circumstances were not present, he would have submitted the claim.

I understand from correspondence from the respondent’s solicitors that the complainant never alerted his employer to a back injury and his ailment did not impact on his ability to attend work. Having considered this matter, it is my view that the existence of a long-standing ailment is not sufficient to amount to a reasonable cause for delaying making a complaint in relation to an alleged unfair dismissal.

The complainant did not submit any medical evidence to show that his injury had such an effect as to impair his decision-making capacity and he did not attend the hearing on the scheduled date. Taking all these matters into consideration, I find that no reasonable cause has been presented to persuade me to grant an extension of time in this case.

Having concluded that there was no reasonable cause for the complainant submitting his complaint outside the legal time limit, I decide that I have no jurisdiction to adjudicate on this complaint.

Complaint is out of time