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UNAT dismissed the Appellant’s motion for leave to file additional pleadings on the basis that he had not demonstrated any exceptional circumstances. UNAT rejected the Appellant’s request for costs as there was no reason to believe that the submissions of the Secretary-General were not made in good faith or were an abuse of process. UNAT held that the Appellant did not have a right to promotion but only a right to be considered for promotion. UNAT held that the Appellant received full and fair consideration for the position. UNAT also affirmed UNDT’s application of the priority consideration...

UNDT exceeded its jurisdiction and erred in law in reviewing the legality of Staff Rule 4.7(a). As Staff Rule 4.7(a) was approved by the General Assembly, the Tribunals had no authority to examine whether or not it is in accord with the �山����Charter or any other higher norms. Nonetheless, UNAT held that Staff Rule 4.7(a) only forbids the Secretary-General “to grant an appointment” to a person who has a close family relationship but does not provide a legal basis to revoke a staff member’s appointment. Accordingly, UNAT concluded that the termination of the retired staff member’s 2016 WAE...

UNAT held that the Appellant did not demonstrate that the UNDT judgment was defective or that the UNDT erred in considering that the selected candidate met the minimum educational requirements and the work experience required for the job. Emphasizing the broad discretion of the Secretary-General and that it was not the role of UNDT to substitute its own decision for that of the Secretary-General, UNAT held that UNDT was not manifestly unreasonable in deciding that the recommendation approved by the Secretary-General was based on an entire process and the experience of the candidates. UNAT held...

UNAT first agreed with the UNDT that the abolition of post was not a reviewable administrative decision. Second, UNAT ruled there was no evidence of improper motives regarding the non-renewal of the staff member’s appointment. The staff member’s main contention on appeal was that his post should have been subject to a Comparative Review Process (CRP) instead of being identified as a “dry cut.” A “dry cut” happens when a post is unique and can therefore be abolished without a comparative review. The staff member claims his post should have undergone a CRP because there were other P-5 political...

UNAT held that UNDT’s interpretation of the totality of the evidence on the record was reasonable. UNAT held that UNDT had correctly found that Mr Russo-Got was Candidate A for the P-3 test and Candidate F for the P-4 test and that UNOPS had submitted contemporaneous documentation showing that he was not recommended because he had failed the written assessment for the two tests. UNAT held that UNDT properly reviewed the contested decisions in accordance with the applicable law.

The evidence of procedural errors and irregularities supported the Dispute Tribunal’s findings of fact that lead to the justifiable conclusion that, had the irregularities not occurred, Mr Russo-Got had a foreseeable and significant chance of selection given his qualifications. The approach adopted by UNDT and by which UNDT assessed Mr.; Russo-Got’s chances of being selected for the post as one in five was reasonable. In the absence of errors of fact or law by UNDT, UNAT defers to its discretion in awarding and quantifying the pecuniary damages.

The Secretary-General appealed on the premise that UNDT improperly substituted its decision for that of the Administration. UNAT disagreed and found that the reason UNDT rescinded the decision was because it suffered from incoherence, i.e. the reasons provided for singling out the staff member with a shorter extension of his FTA changed over time and were not supported by the facts. UNAT also noted the ex post facto reasons for selecting the cross-appellant rather than one of the other staff members provide an inadequate justification, especially in light of the incoherence and the fact that...

UNAT disagreed with UNDT and found the procedure laid down in the Staff Regulations and Rules was not properly followed, as such the Secretary-General’s exclusion of the staff member from the selection process was not legal, rational, procedurally correct, or proportionate. UNAT firstly held that UNDT erred when it ruled that the invitation e-mail respected the advance notice requirement. UNAT reasoned that the day of the event (the receipt of the email) cannot be counted in computing the number of days required to give advance notice for a test. As such, by requiring at least five working...

One of the elements that an application for suspension of action must show is that the contested decision “appears prima facie to be unlawful”, i.e. that there is a reasonably arguable case that the contested decision is unlawful. A merely reasonable (hence legitimate in ordinary parlance) expectation of a particular outcome is not the same as a legitimate expectation that gives rise to any legal rights, and will be insufficient to establish reasonably arguable unlawfulness. Outcome: The Judge held that there is an insufficient evidentiary basis for concluding even on a prima facie level that...

The judge makes his decision on the basis of all the documents in the file to the extent that all the parties are aware of them and have been able to discuss them. He must not exclude a document produced by a party unless it is submitted after the expiry of a time limit which he himself has fixed or which is imposed on him by the texts and only if this document is not likely to modify the outcome of the dispute, a hypothesis which requires the judge to grant the parties additional time to ensure compliance with the adversarial proceedings. The regulations in force for establishing the list of...