Judgment No. 4742
Decision
The complaint is dismissed.
Summary
The complainant seeks compensation for the unfair treatment she considers she has suffered because her applications for several positions were rejected and she was not able to take part in training.
Judgment keywords
Keywords
receivability of the complaint; complaint dismissed
Considerations 5-6
Extract:
Staff Regulation R VI 1.05 provides that appeals must be lodged within 60 days of notification of the disputed decision. The decisions on which the complainant’s claim for moral damages rests were therefore not submitted for an internal appeal within the time limit prescribed in the Staff Regulations.
The Tribunal has repeatedly emphasised the importance of the strict observance of applicable time limits when challenging an administrative decision. In Judgment 4673, consideration 12, it pointed out that a complaint will not be receivable if the underlying internal appeal was not filed within the applicable time limits (see also, in this regard, Judgment 4426, consideration 9, and Judgment 3758, considerations 10 and 11). According to the Tribunal’s firm precedent based on the provisions of Article VII, paragraph 1, of its Statute, the fact that an appeal lodged by a complainant was out of time renders her or his complaint irreceivable for failure to exhaust the internal means of redress available to staff members of the organisation, which cannot be deemed to have been exhausted unless recourse has been had to them in compliance with the formal requirements and within the prescribed time limit (see Judgments 4655, consideration 20, and 4517, consideration 7).
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 3758, 4426, 4517, 4655, 4673
Keywords
receivability of the complaint; failure to exhaust internal remedies; late appeal
Consideration 9
Extract:
[T]he Tribunal cannot accept the complainant’s argument that, in the present case, her complaint is limited to the Organisation’s “decision” to dismiss her claim for compensation for the moral injury it had caused her, pointing to the fact that she is not requesting that each of these individual selection decisions be set aside, which would render her claim receivable. The Tribunal considers this manner of presenting the case contrived, because, as it recalled in Judgment 4655, consideration 15, in a dispute involving a challenge to individual decisions, as here, compensation for injury arising from the alleged unlawfulness of such decisions could only be granted as a consequence of their setting aside, which presupposes by definition that they have been challenged within the applicable time limit. Endorsing the complainant’s argument would have the effect of authorising the Organisation’s staff members in practice to evade the effects of the rules on time limits for filing appeals by allowing them to seek compensation at any time for injury caused to them by an individual decision, even though they did not challenge that decision in due time. Such a situation would scarcely be permissible having regard to the requirement of stability of legal relations which, as the Tribunal regularly points out in its case law, is the very justification for time bars (see, for example, Judgment 3406, consideration 12, and the case law cited therein).
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 3406, 4655
Keywords
receivability of the complaint; compensation; late appeal
|
