Legal Complaints Review Officer Decisions

Decision: If the review involved the exercise of discretion, a CNDRO should exercise particular caution before substituting its own judgment without good reason. However, this does not require the OLCA to submit uniformly to the views of the standards committees when the complaint relates to the conduct of legal disputes. Certainly, there was no reason for the BRDO to refrain from a different conclusion if it was not satisfied that this was a glaring situation. Mr G. and Ms M. requested a review of the criminal decision and its publication. The Legal Complaints Officer (the Review Officer) reviewed the fines and decided that there was no public interest in publishing Ms. M.`s name, but that it was in the public interest to publish Mr. G.`s name.

1 Unreasonableness is one of the most problematic grounds for judicial review. 7 As stated above, judicial review concerns the lawfulness of administrative decisions and not the substance. Since this court will not substitute its decision for that of the specialized decision-maker, the relevance of a decision has always been presumed by Wednesbury`s high standard of insufficiency. 8 Unreasonableness was declared at Wednesbury as a decision “that no reasonable body could have made.” 9 This high standard of inadequacy has been applied in the context of audit officers,10 although it is questionable whether this approach is too stringent. 11 Revisions shall be as informal and simple as possible, with due regard to the review procedure itself and the law. Judicial review is the supervisory function of the court which ensures that public authority is exercised in accordance with the law. 2 The assessment of the admissibility of a decision relates primarily to the examination of its conformity with the procedure and not to the content of the decision itself. 1 The screening officer`s decision concerns an application for review by the second defendant (Dr Hegarty) against a decision of the Otago Standards Committee (`the Committee`) convened under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006 (`the Act`). The Committee had dismissed a complaint by Dr.

Hegarty regarding the professional conduct of the applicant (the practitioner). The Review Officer reversed this finding and upheld Dr. Hegarty`s complaint. There was no way of knowing whether Q would be ordered to challenge H`s opinion because the physician had not given an assessment. The relevant question was whether H had a conflict of position that affected his availability to give a grade of P. One would expect the committee`s practitioners to be fully aware of these differences. Given the context and content of the language used by the Committee, the ORDO was free to interpret its analysis as contingent on the assumption that H was present at the hearing for consideration by the Council and had been cross-examined. It follows that the BRCDO was entitled to regard this as a false impression of the circumstances in which H`s complaint was made.