Judgment No. 4349
Decision
1. The decision by the Director, IOS, of 20 July 2017 is set aside, as is the impugned decision of 2 August 2018 to the extent that it confirmed the Director’s decision.
2. The matter is remitted to WHO to proceed in accordance with consideration 13 of this judgment.
3. WHO shall pay the complainant moral damages in the amount of 15,000 United States dollars.
4. WHO shall pay the complainant 1,000 United States dollars in costs.
5. All other claims are dismissed.
Summary
The complainant challenges the decision to consider his harassment complaint closed.
Judgment keywords
Keywords
complaint allowed; decision quashed; case sent back to organisation; harassment
Considerations 2-4
Extract:
WHO seeks the joinder of this complaint with the complainant’s second complaint, which he filed in the Tribunal on 28 October 2018. In so doing, WHO submits that the two complaints overlap substantively with regard to several allegations which they contain. The complainant opposes the joinder on the ground that the complaints raise “legal and factual issues which have no commonality”. He relies on Judgment 656.
The Tribunal stated the following in consideration 1 of Judgment 656:
“Before the Tribunal will join two or more complaints and deal with them in a single judgment two conditions must be fulfilled.
The first is that the substance of the claims must be the same. Whether they are stated differently is of no account: what matters is that the Tribunal should be able to rule on them in a single decision.
The second condition is that the material facts, viz. those on which the claims rest and which are relevant thereto, should be the same.
The complainants need not all have the same arguments. The Tribunal rules as it sees fit and is not constrained by the parties’ submissions, variations between them being immaterial.”
The Tribunal has rejected applications for the joinder of complaints essentially on the ground that they involved no commonality of legal issues and facts (see, for example, Judgments 3620, consideration 2, 4000, consideration 1, 4114, consideration 2, and 4171, consideration 1). In Judgment 4086, consideration 8, the Tribunal rejected an application for the joinder of the complaint that was the subject of that judgment with another complaint. This was on the ground that that other complaint was not within the scope of the complaint that was the subject of Judgment 4086 and that it was accordingly not convenient to join them. Similarly, WHO’s application to join the complainant’s second complaint with the present complaint will be rejected as the former is not within the scope of the present complaint and does not raise the same or similar legal and factual issues.
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 656, 3620, 4000, 4086, 4114, 4171
Keywords
joinder
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