Judgment No. 3943
Decision
1. The decisions of the Director General of WIPO of 8 September 2015, 3 May 2016 and 6 May 2016 are set aside.
2. The cases are remitted to WIPO, which shall proceed as indicated in consideration 8 [of the judgment].
3. All other claims are dismissed.
Summary
The complainants seek a redefinition of their employment relationships.
Judgment keywords
Keywords
complaint allowed; decision quashed; case sent back to organisation; conversion of contract
Considerations 5 and 9
Extract:
The Tribunal considers that when an internal appeal is tainted with a flaw – other than late submission – which prevents it from being considered as properly filed, it is for the appeals body, in the exercise of its duty of care, to enable the complainant to correct the appeal by granting her or him a reasonable period of time in which to do so (for a similar case, see Judgment 3127, under 10).
[...]
In the particular circumstances of the case, and given the nature of the flaw that affected the complainants’ internal appeals, there is no reason to award them moral damages in respect of the unlawfulness of the impugned decisions or the delay in processing their appeals. Nor will they be awarded costs.
Keywords
internal appeal; duty of care
Considerations 7 and 8
Extract:
[T]he Director General was wrong to dismiss the complainant's internal appeals as irreceivable [...]. The impugned decisions must therefore be set aside, without there being any need for the Tribunal to rule on the other issues raised by the complainants, including that of the receivability of the internal appeals on which the Appeals Board did not give an opinion, nor to grant the application of one complainant for oral proceedings.
Keywords
case sent back to organisation
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