An Interesting Disputes Tribunal Tale - Continued

Further to our blog An Interesting Disputes Tribunal Tale the District Court judge has come back with his decision on granting of an appeal.

I agree with the original applicant. Matters must be brought to finality. As I have pointed out, there are only limited appeal grounds to the District Court. It can never be the position that a party should be allowed an appeal, or for that matter a rehearing, only to correct errors or omissions in their conduct of the original hearing, which might have led to an adverse result. I accept that the conduct of these hearings is over to the parties themselves, before a Referee (in this case a qualified Barrister and Solicitor) .......... they are not entitled to representation by lawyers. 

However, the offset for that is that they are on an equal footing, that the hearing takes place less formally than in a Court, rather sooner, and of course at much less expense for the parties. The "substantial merits and justice" provisions of S.18 (6) of the Act apply. Consistent with these factors, decisions are expected, as was the case here, almost immediately, or as soon as can be. 

The appellant appears to me to have misunderstood the very limited nature of the appeal rights to the District Court, treating them as some kind of further re-hearing application. This is not right. It is not an appropriate case then for me to grant leave to bring the appeal out of time.

So what does this mean?

Quite simply, once you have been through the Disputes Tribunal process and the Referee has given his/her decision then that decision is binding unless one party has been treated unfairly.