a) Serious illness 

In T 447/13 the board held that, for the purposes of deciding whether to grant a request for postponement of oral proceedings on grounds of illness, "serious illness" means an illness which is sufficiently serious to prevent the representative travelling to oral proceedings and satisfactorily presenting the case on the appointed day.

In T 1246/10 the board accepted a first postponement of the oral proceedings in view of the exacerbation of the appellant's serious illness and the fact that the respondent did not object to a postponement. However, the board refused the second request to postpone oral proceedings filed less than one month before the scheduled date. The respondent opposed any postponement thereof. Furthermore, the board had no indication that a further postponement for a few months could change the appellant's personal health situation. The appellant should have appointed a representative if he could not attend the oral proceedings himself.

In ex parte case T 999/16 the board did not grant the last of numerous appellant’s requests for a further postponement of the oral proceedings, filed on the grounds of serious illness. Though it could be expected that a professional representative would be appointed if the appellant could not attend the proceedings, the appellant remained unrepresented. The medical certificate annexed to the aforementioned last request, like the previously provided certificates, had been issued in the Czech language (without any translation provided) and had not covered the actual date of the arranged oral proceedings. Given that none of the medical certificates on file constituted sufficient evidence that the appellant had indeed been prevented from attending and presenting its case on the appointed day and given that no professional representative had been appointed before or after the start date of the appellant’s "duration of incapacity for work", the board was unable to accede to the appellant’s request.