The advantage available to an appellant in considering an appeal to the District Court is that there would have been a published review hearing decision that specified the reason or reasons for upholding the original ACC decision. Accordingly the likelihood of success at appeal would be more readily established taking into account the information to hand and whether there was a need to gain further independent assessments etc in order to strengthen the appeal case.

The scale of fees outlines the costs that are involved in the conduct of a District Court appeal. There is the need for the data basing of the file documents if this has not already been done to enable focused submissions to be prepared. The average time in resourcing case law and putting submissions together will vary between 8 to 14 hours on average depending on the complexity of the issue being appealed.

Where it is obvious that further independent reports are required to support a case the cost of those reports would be additional to the scale of fees charges.

A recent decision of the District Court determined that if an appeal is successful that the reasonable costs and disbursements in bringing the appeal must be paid for by ACC. Therefore unless the District Court ruled otherwise a successful outcome to an appeal should not impose any expense on a successful appellant.

Conversely however the District Court could order costs against an unsuccessful appellant. This would not be expected to happen if an appellant was able to fairly argue that the appeal had been reasonably brought. The onus therefore is on Advkit Para Legal Services* to advise a potential appellant to the District Court of the probability of success. Where an appellant was advised that he or she could not reasonably expect to succeed because of previous District Court decisions our service would require a signed indemnity before we would go to appeal to the District Court.

Where an appellant has instructed an appeal to proceed to the District Court which has failed the appellant would be liable to the fees set out in the scale of fees for conducting the appeal.