Employment

The appellant argued that there was no difference between contractual domestic disciplinary tribunals of the kind which regulated sporting and professional activities and the disciplinary body established by contractual agreement by the parties to an employment contract. She submitted that the principles of finality and fairness to a party were equally apposite to both. The Court of Appeal held that it was wrong to describe the exercise of disciplinary power by the employer as a form of adjudication. The purpose of the procedure was not “a determination of any issue which establishes the existence of a legal right”, as Lord Bridge put it in Thrasyvoulou v Secretary of State for the Environment [1990] 2 AC 273, nor was it properly regarded as “determining a dispute”.