A litigant in person who tried to send his notice of appeal half an hour before the deadline has been allowed an extension after the email failed.

The claimant in Hawkes v Oxford Economics Limited had waited until just before his 4pm deadline to appeal a decision of an employment tribunal that his unfair dismissal case should be dismissed.

Alexander Hawkes sent all the necessary documents to the employment appeal tribunal by 3.33pm on the due date, but they did not arrive. It was only when he realised the email had not been received – 10 days later – that he realised and then resent the documents.

The registrar did not consider that Hawkes had a ‘good excuse’ for his late appeal and refused to extend the time.

On appeal, His Honour Judge Shanks overturned this decision, finding there had indeed been a ‘good excuse’ and ruling this was a case where the circumstances justified the ‘exceptional step’ of granting an extension.

‘In general, in the absence of a “bounce back” it would be reasonable to assume that a properly sent email would arrive at its destination within seconds,’ said the judge in his summary. ‘Although there was no good excuse for leaving things until so late in the day in practice this did not make any difference in this case: if the same thing had happened (say) a week before [Hawkes] would still not have known about it until after time had expired.’

The appeal tribunal heard that Hawkes had brought a claim for unfair dismissal in 2019, and on receiving the tribunal’s judgment he immediately decided to appeal.

On the deadline day for filing, he send his bundle in a zip file and added further attachments. It was accepted that Hawkes did not know his email had not been received.

Hawkes told the EAT that he had been unable to hand in documents in person as he was stuck in Edinburgh during lockdown. His internet provider had confirmed that the service was ‘unstable’, causing inconsistency in sending and receiving data.

The judge said there was no good excuse for Hawkes starting to send the documents only half an hour before the deadline and he had been on a ‘misguided and unnecessary’ quest for notes that might help his case.

But the reason for the non-arrival of the email was ‘clearly a technical one’ which was not Hawkes’ fault, and he knew nothing about the failure until it was flagged up to him.

Extension was granted, effectively meaning Hawkes’ appeal was made in time.