Industrial tribunals: Tribunal chair may sit alone for jurisdictional issues

An industrial tribunal chair sitting alone without lay members was entitled to hear and determine a preliminary issue as to whether the transferee of a company in liquidation could be joined as second respondent to a former employee's dismissal and discrimination proceedings, the EAT holds in Tsangacos v Amalgamated Chemicals Ltd and another [1997] IRLR 4. That it was necessary to hear oral evidence and decide contentious issues of fact in order to do so was not a bar to the chair sitting alone, but only one of the factors to be considered in deciding whether it was better to convene a full tribunal.