Judgment No. 4657
Decision
The applications for interpretation and for review are dismissed.
Summary
The complainant filed applications for interpretation and for review of Judgment 4074.
Judgment keywords
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 4074
Keywords
application for interpretation; application for review; complaint dismissed
Considerations 3-5
Extract:
[T]here is a threshold issue to be addressed, namely whether the application for review is receivable having regard to the time taken after Judgment 4074 was delivered to file the application for review. Receivability is a matter that can be raised by the Tribunal ex officio. In Judgment 1952, consideration 3, the Tribunal said that an application for review should be filed within a reasonable time. To similar effect are Judgments 3982 and 2219. In the first-mentioned of these latter cases, the period was patently unreasonable and the application was dismissed as irreceivable (and also baseless on the merits).
In this case the application for review was filed over 20 months after Judgment 4074 was delivered in public. The amounts payable under the judgment were paid, the Tribunal infers from correspondence in evidence, sometime shortly before 3 April 2019.
The Tribunal invited the applicant and the Global Fund to make submissions on the question of receivability. The central issue is whether 20 months is a reasonable time. The Global Fund effectively said it would abide by the Tribunal’s decision. The complainant’s submissions were made on 2 March 2023. He recounts that in early April 2019 he began the process of trying to obtain documents from the Global Fund he apparently hoped to use in any application for review. He had some very limited success but was mainly unsuccessful. By July 2019 it would have been apparent to the complainant that the prospect of obtaining the documents then being sought was negligible. He could have then filed the application for review. But he persisted into 2020 in making requests through channels he had not hitherto followed. The complainant made a confidential submission concerning his personal circumstances from February 2020 until September 2020. The import of this submission was that the focus of his time and energy were those personal circumstances and the making of the application for review was “forgotten”. But even accepting this is correct it does not account for a delay of approximately a year from the time the judgment was made public until these personal circumstances began to unfold. The complainant could have applied for a review, but did not in this period. Even discounting the total time following February 2020, the time taken to file the application for review was unreasonable. It is thus irreceivable.
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 1952, 2219, 3982, 4074
Keywords
application for review; reasonable time
Consideration 6
Extract:
For a considerable period, the process of review was not expressly recognised in the Tribunal’s Statute, but it now is in Article VI by an amendment made by the International Labour Conference on 7 June 2016. However, the settled principles governing the process of review have been developed by the Tribunal over time and before the amendment and continue to apply. As the Tribunal most recently observed in consideration 2 of Judgment 4440: “[P]ursuant to Article VI of its Statute, the Tribunal’s judgments are ‘final and without appeal’ and have res judicata authority. They may therefore be reviewed only in exceptional circumstances and on strictly limited grounds. As stated, for example, in Judgments 1178, 1507, 2059, 2158 and 2736, the only admissible grounds for review are failure to take account of material facts, a material error involving no exercise of judgement, an omission to rule on a claim, or the discovery of new facts which the complainant was unable to rely on in the original proceedings. Moreover, these pleas must be likely to have a bearing on the outcome of the case. Pleas of a mistake of law, failure to admit evidence, misinterpretation of the facts or omission to rule on a plea, on the other hand, afford no grounds for review (see, for example, Judgments 3001, under 2, 3452, under 2, and 3473, under 3).”
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 3001, 3452, 3473, 4440
Keywords
application for review
Consideration 9
Extract:
The complainant’s application for interpretation of Judgment 4074 is misconceived. An application for interpretation raises for consideration the meaning of the decision contained in a judgment and potentially its legal effect (see Judgments 4409, consideration 6, 3822, consideration 5, and 3014, consideration 3). In exceptional cases (and this case is not such a case) such an application can concern the grounds of the judgment as well but only if the decision refers to them explicitly so that they are indirectly incorporated in the decision (see Judgments 4567, consideration 3, 3564, consideration 1, and 2483, consideration 3). In the present case the orders actually made were clear and unambiguous. No occasion arises for their interpretation.
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 2483, 3014, 3564, 3822, 4074, 4409, 4567
Keywords
application for interpretation
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