In this case, the Applicant filed an application for revision of the judgment out of time. A decisive or material fact is one that was not known at the time the judgment was given. That fact must be of significant weight such that its application to the case should lead to a revision of the judgment.The Applicant was investigated and later summarily dismissed by UNHCR on allegations of corruption in refugee processing in the Nairobi office of UNHCR. The Applicant was also arrested by the Kenyan Police and charged in a Kenyan Court with various criminal offences, however, the Applicant was...
Judgment-related matters
The Applicant’s request for recusal was not receivable and did not warrant a referral to the President of the Tribunal for determination. The Applicant’s claims were all of a substantive nature and would have been more appropriately dealt with by an appellate Tribunal. There was nothing to rectify or correct in the judgment as none of the particulars listed in the application were related to any errors.
The Tribunal rejected the application and awarded costs for abuse of process.
A judgment on receivability is not an executable judgment. It is not a judgment on the merits of the case where all issues have been adjudicated upon. An executable judgment is one in which the court determines on the substantive issues of the case having heard and deliberated on the evidence and arguments submitted by the parties. In so doing, it ends the dispute before the court which heard it. A judgment on receivability is based on a procedural issue. In the present case, the procedural issue had to do with the timeliness of the application and scope of the court’s jurisdiction where the...
In that judgment, the Tribunal had inter alia found that the decision to require the Applicant to revert to his initial P-3 post had not been the subject of a management evaluation and consequently was not receivable. He requested the Tribunal to vacate certain paragraphs of the judgment. The Tribunal held that for a request for revision to be successful, all the requirements in art.12.1 of its Statute have to be met.
The UNDT found that the Applicant had already submitted these two documents along with his initial application of 19 December 2011 on which judgment No. UNDT/2012/045 was issued. Therefore, the Applicant cannot claim that these facts were new or that the Tribunal was unaware of them, since both documents were part of the application of 19 December 2011. The UNDT considered that the application for revision constituted an abuse of process for which the Applicant should bear costs of 800 USD based on art. 10.6 of the Statute of the Tribunal.
Receivability: The Tribunal considered whether it has the requisite jurisdiction to make a determination on an application for interpretation of an order as opposed to a final judgment. Noting that: (i) there is no provision in the UNDT Statute or Rules of Procedure governing interpretation of orders or expressly prohibiting interpretation of a decision that is labeled “Order”; and (ii) that regardless of whether decisions on applications for suspension of action are labeled as orders or judgments, they determine substantial issues, the Tribunal, pursuant to articles 19 and 36 of the Rules of...
The Tribunal held that there are two stages in the procedure for the interpretation of a judgment. First, receivability must be determined and secondly if it is receivable whether it should be interpreted. Receivability: The Tribunal considered whether the filing of an appeal should be taken to mean that it is under consideration and therefore debar an applicant from an interpretation. The Tribunal held that the mere filing of an appeal against a judgment by one party to a case constitutes no legal impediment to the other party filing for an interpretation because the filing of an appeal is...
The Judgment does not give rise to any uncertainty in terms of its execution or its binding effect under art. 32 of the Tribunal’s Rules of Procedure. the meaning of Judgment No. UNDT/2015/087 leaves no reasonable doubt as to the will of the Tribunal or the arguments leading to the Tribunal’s decision, and thus does not require clarification.
Interpretation – As held in Sidell 2014-UNAT-489 and Abbasi 2013-UNAT-315, the purpose of interpretation is not to determine the disagreement of an applicant with a judgment who wishes to reargue an appeal. Interpretation is only needed to clarify the meaning of a judgment when it leaves reasonable doubts about the will of the Tribunal or the arguments leading to a decision. But if the judgment is comprehensible, whatever the opinion the parties may have about it or its reasoning, an application for interpretation is not admissible.