Judgment approved by the court for handing down
Mr J Logo v Payone Gmbh and others
The Role of the EAT
29.
I have had regard to the well-known principles concerning appeals to the EAT reiterated in
DPP Law Ltd v Greenberg [2021] EWCA Civ 672, [2021] IRLR 1016. The decision of an
Employment Tribunal must be read fairly and as a whole, without focusing merely on individual
phrases or passages in isolation, and without being hypercritical. An Employment Tribunal is not
required to identify all the evidence relied on in reaching its conclusions of fact. It is not legitimate
for the EAT to assume that a failure by an Employment Tribunal to refer to evidence means that it
was not taken into account. The Court of Appeal held at paragraph 58:
58. Moreover, where a tribunal has correctly stated the legal principles to be
applied, an appellate tribunal or court should, in my view, be slow to conclude that it
has not applied those principles, and should generally do so only where it is clear
from the language used that a different principle has been applied to the facts found.
Tribunals sometimes make errors, having stated the principles correctly but slipping
up in their application, as the case law demonstrates; but if the correct principles
were in the tribunal's mind, as demonstrated by their being identified in the express
terms of the decision, the tribunal can be expected to have been seeking faithfully to
apply them, and to have done so unless the contrary is clear from the language of its
decision. This presumption ought to be all the stronger where, as in the present case,
the decision is by an experienced specialist tribunal applying very familiar principles
whose application forms a significant part of its day to day judicial workload.
The decision of the Employment Tribunal
The Black Face Incident - 18 November 2016
30.
The Employment Tribunal made the following findings of fact:
The ‘black face’ incident …
125. R1’s Christmas party took place on 18 November 2016. At that time Miss
Ganswindt job was the Customer Service Agent for the UK & Republic of Ireland.
…
128. The claimant’s recollection (set out in his paragraphs 15 and 16) is that there
was a conversation during which Miss Ganswindt and another customer care
colleague asked whether he was dressing up for the evening event. The claimant
states that he confirmed his attendance and asked Miss Ganswindt if she was
attending and whether she was following any theme. He states that she refused to
confirm whether she would be dressed in any theme and burst into laughter (C para.16).
129. According to Miss Ganswindt, the slogan of the event was Oscar Night (AG
para.6) Miss Ganswindt, who is white, attended the event dressed as the
character played by Whoopi Goldberg in the Sister Act films. A photograph of
her at the event (C:1485) shows her together with a colleague dressed as Princess
© EAT 2025
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[2025] EAT 95