UNAT Held or UNDT Pronouncements
The UNAT noted that the Agency had removed the disputed Note from the staff member’s Official Status File and provided him with his requested certificate of service and performance evaluations. The UNAT found that the appeal in the respective part had therefore become moot.
The UNAT held that even if the issue were not moot, it was not persuaded that the UNWRA DT had exercised its discretion injudiciously or otherwise erred. The UNAT noted that in its earlier Judgment it had found that the Agency had no obligation to partially execute that first UNRWA DT Judgment.
The UNAT found that the staff member had advanced no evidentiary basis to support a claim for further compensation for harm.
The UNAT found that since the staff member had not been successful on appeal and there was no evidence of a manifest abuse of the appeals process, there existed no basis to award costs against the Commissioner-General in this matter.
The UNAT dismissed the appeal and affirmed the UNRWA DT Judgment.
Decision Contested or Judgment/Order Appealed
A former UNRWA staff member contested a decision to place a note in his Official Status File, a decision not to approve his sick leave request and a decision not to complete his performance evaluation reports and not to provide a certificate of service. By Judgment No. UNRWA/DT/2023/018, the UNRWA DT rescinded the first decision and ordered the Agency to pay him JOD 3,000 Jordanian dinars for his legal costs, dismissed his challenge to the second decision, and rescinded the third decision and ordered the Agency to pay him an additional JOD 3,000 for his legal costs. Both parties appealed in part.
The staff member filed an application to the UNRWA DT for partial execution of Judgment No. UNRWA/DT/2023/018.
In Judgment No. UNRWA/DT/2023/050, the UNRWA DT dismissed the application for partial execution.
The staff member appealed.
Subsequently, in Judgment No. 2024-UNAT-1429, the UNAT reversed the awards of legal costs in Judgment No. UNRWA/DT/2023/018 and awarded the staff member compensation for moral damages in the amount of three months’ net base salary.
Legal Principle(s)
As a general principle, a matter is moot when the Appeals Tribunal’s judgment will have no practical effect on the parties. This usually occurs where there is no longer an existing or live controversy between the parties, in which case the Appeals Tribunal will usually not make a ruling on such matters where the judgment will amount to an advisory opinion on the legal questions which are abstract, academic or hypothetical and have no direct effect, unless there are found to be compelling reasons to the contrary.
Partial execution of a judgment may, depending on the applicable facts and circumstances, be appropriate where it is found that the delay in the execution of that portion of the judgment which is not under appeal would cause significant harm to one party, while the entry into force of the remaining parts of the judgment are suspended pending the outcome of the appeal.
For damages for material and moral harm to be awarded, there must exist a sufficient evidentiary basis establishing that such harm has in fact occurred, with harm not to be too readily assumed on an insubstantial factual basis.