Decisions made prior to 2 April 2009 are not excluded from being challenged before the Dispute Tribunal. Outcome: The application was held to be receivable and the motion to dismiss was denied. The instant case was also held to be exceptional, deserving of the waiver and extension of the time limits. The staff member was granted two weeks to file and serve a revised application.
The Dispute Tribunal may suspend or waive the deadlines for the filing of applications imposed by the Statute and Rules of Procedure, but may not suspend or waive the deadlines in the Staff Rules concerning management evaluation because this is the prerogative of the Secretary-General.The drafters of the Statute of the Dispute Tribunal intended that all applications to the Tribunal would be subject to the rules under which this Tribunal operates. Therefore, pursuant to Article 8.3 of the Statute, the Tribunal has no jurisdiction to extend the deadlines for the filing of requests for...
The reservations which each of the Applicants formulated upon accepting the lump sum are not binding on the Administration since, at the time the agreement was signed, the Administration and the staff member were not in a contractual situation in which each could negotiate rights. Instead, they were in a situation governed by rules in which the Administration could only apply the rules and the staff member could only accept or reject the lump-sum payment proposed. The applicants contend that only by accepting the lump-sum payment with reservations could they challenge the basis on which the...
UNDT preliminarily rejected the Applicant’s requests for recusal, holding that there were no longer any grounds for ruling on those requests since the UNDT President previously rejected those requests. Concerning the first application, UNDT held that the Applicant did not establish the illegality of the election of JC and that his application for the election to be declared null and void must be rejected. With regard to the Applicant’s request that all decisions taken by the Internal Justice Council be rescinded, UNDT held that it is clear from General Assembly Resolution 62/228 of 22 December...
UNDT noted that the Applicant had until 2 February 2009 to file an appeal before the Joint Appeals Board. However, the Applicant’s appeal was dated 27 February 2009 and was not received by the Joint Appeals Board until 3 March 2009. The Applicant’s Counsel did not present any exceptional circumstance that prevented him from filing an appeal within the time limits prescribed in the Staff Rules then in effect. UNDT held that the request was therefore irreceivable. UNDT rejected the application.
A summary judgment was rendered because, as per art. 9 of the RoP, there was no dispute as to the material facts and judgment was restricted to matters of law. As one of the Applicants did not file an application in person (art. 8.1 (b), 3.1 and 2.1 of UNDT Statute) neither designated a counsel to act on his behalf (art. 12 of UNDT RoP), his application was deemed as not receivable. Furthermore, considering that an apology is beyond the remedies which may be ordered by the Tribunal in accordance with art. 10.5 of UNDT Statute, the application was declared as out of the Tribunal’s mandate.
UNDT noted that the Applicant, having received the contested decision on 4 February 2009, did not file her application with this Tribunal until 14 July 2009, which was beyond the 90 calendar-day deadline set forth in Article 8 of the UNDT Statute. UNDT noted that before it can reject an application, it must determine whether failure to meet the deadline could have resulted from erroneous information provided by the Administration. UNDT held that the Applicant was not given any information that could have misled her, because, as she herself wrote, it was not until after 1 July 2009 that she...
UNDT held that it was only when the Applicant learned of the identity of the successful candidate that he could reasonably have apprehended that there were grounds for such a review. Time therefore runs from 2 March 2008. UNDT held that the time for filing the appeal ran from the time when the Applicant discovered the identity of the person which in turn gave rise to his apprehension that he had grounds for an appeal. Accordingly, his application for review was in time and his appeal is receivable.
The jurisdiction ratione materiae conferred on the Tribunal is set out in Article 2.1(a) of the Statute of the United Nations Dispute Tribunal. Given the nature of the decisions taken by the administration, there cannot be a precise and limited definition of such a decision. What is or is not an administrative decision must be decided on a case by case basis and taking into account the specific context of the surrounding circumstances when such decisions were taken. This is an administrative decision related to the applicant’s contract of employment and is therefore receivable.
Since the Applicant only pointed out that the non-implementation of the indicated provision had restricted her options to be selected for posts in some duty stations, she failed to identify any such administrative decision. The Tribunal stressed that a selection process involves a series of steps which lead to an administrative decision. It stated that only if the Applicant contested the outcome of a selection process for a specific post (the administrative decision), would the Tribunal be competent to hear and pass judgement on her application.
