When Power Goes Wrong · Liability & Remedy Ledger · Part 14

What can an Ombudsman do that a court cannot—and vice versa?

Ombudsman investigations can address maladministration more broadly than strict legal unlawfulness and can recommend correction, cancellation, reasons or reconsideration. Those recommendations are a different accountability mechanism from binding court judgments.

Not every public wrong needs to begin as litigation. The Ombudsmen Act 1975 creates an investigative accountability route for decisions, recommendations, acts and omissions within jurisdiction.

Section 22 is broader than a simple illegality test. An Ombudsman may act where conduct appears contrary to law, unreasonable, unjust, oppressive, improperly discriminatory, based on mistake, wrong, or where discretionary power was exercised for improper purpose or on irrelevant grounds.

The Ombudsman may recommend that an omission be rectified, a decision cancelled or varied, a practice altered, a law reconsidered, reasons given or other steps taken.

Ombudsman remedy ≠ court order.The power is principally investigatory and recommendatory. Its strength is broader administrative scrutiny and institutional pressure; its limit is that it does not ordinarily substitute for a binding damages judgment, quashing order or injunction where those are required.

Best suited toMaladministration, unreasonable process, unexplained decisions, administrative unfairness and systemic practice.

Possible outcomeRecommendation, reasons, reconsideration, correction, reporting and public accountability.

Not a substitute forDamages, urgent injunction, limitation-sensitive filing or binding appellate determination.

Strategic pointA complaint may complement litigation, but it should not be allowed to make a court limitation period expire.

Choose the accountability body according to the remedy needed—not simply according to which process is easiest to start.

Primary statuteOmbudsmen Act 1975, s 22.

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