New Zealand Case Law: Decisions & Judgments

Topic

Assessor qualifications

Legal area

Court

12 Apr 2016

Hall v Accident Compensation Corporation

Citation

[2016] NZACC 94
Court

District Court

The Court dismissed the appeal because the Corporation reasonably exercised its discretion: contemporaneous and a comprehensive retrospective SNA (Ms Lewis), peer review and panel consideration supported the funded packages; there was no legal error, failure to consider relevant matters or plain wrongness; lump sum impairment reports do not displace SNAs; occupational therapist assessors were appropriately qualified under s84 and relevant definitions; therefore appellant was not entitled to 24/7 attendant care for the claimed periods.
1 Nov 2013

Puhara v Accident Compensation Corporation

Citation

[2013] NZACC 369
Court

District Court

The assessment by Dr Powell could not be shown to be flawed, there is no statutory requirement that an assessor be an ophthalmologist, and differing expert opinion (Professor McGhee) did not invalidate the 8% WPI assessment; therefore the respondent's decision was confirmed and the appeal dismissed.
1 Oct 2007

Grey v Accident Compensation Corporation

Citation

[2007] NZACC 228
Court

District Court

The assessor's impairment assessment was set aside because, although trained in the Guides, the assessor lacked sufficient specialised expertise and provided insufficient analysis to distinguish injury-related neuropsychiatric impairment from pre-morbid behaviour; the specialised nature of the assessment required authoritative psychiatric/neuropsychological evaluation and cogent reasons, thus the matter is remitted for a new assessment by a different assessor with suitable psychiatric or neuropsychological qualifications.
21 Aug 2000

Nansen v Accident Compensation Corporation

Citation

[2000] NZACC 216
Court

District Court

Because the Act and its predecessor are silent as to required assessor qualifications, there is no legal requirement that ACC appoint a specialist; the appointment of a general practitioner assessor who applied the AMA Guides was a lawful exercise of discretion and, absent evidence the assessment was flawed, the assessed whole person impairment (21%) minus prior lump sum percentage (15%) did not meet the statutory threshold for an independence allowance, so the ACC decision was confirmed.

New Zealand Case Law

Hall v Accident Compensation Corporation

Puhara v Accident Compensation Corporation

Grey v Accident Compensation Corporation

Nansen v Accident Compensation Corporation