Varying disclosure requirements in Queensland personal injury matters

While legislation designed to prevent litigation involving personal injuries can be effective, parties should be mindful of the varying disclosure requirements between the different legislation covering personal injuries in order to ensure the best overall outcomes.

As with all states, Queensland’s Personal Injuries Proceedings Act (PIPA) requires a pre-court procedure to be undertaken by the parties in an effort to resolve personal injury claims without the involvement of the courts.  PIPA, like other Acts regulating personal injuries and workers’ compensation claims, has specific disclosure requirements.  The varying requirements of the different pieces of legislation can result in a quagmire of a different disclosure requirements, even within the same claim.

PIPA requires the respondent to provide copies of reports and documents which are directly relevant to a matter in issue regarding the incident giving rise to the personal injury and reports regarding the claimant’s medical, cognitive, functional or vocational capacity. 

Additionally PIPA allows the claimant to request information that is in the respondent’s possession ‘about the circumstances of, or the reasons for, the incident’.  This expression has recently been considered in two Court of Appeal decisions which have interpreted this provision strictly, with the documents required to be directly relevant to the incident as it is described in the notice of claim.

However, if a party is added as a contributor to a claim by the respondent, the respondent is only required to disclose copies of reports and documents prescribed in the legislation to the contributor.  The contributor must then provide the respondent with copies of reports and documentary material about the incident.

Parties should be mindful that if the claim does not settle and proceeds to litigation, the disclosure requirements of litigation are considerably more onerous, requiring the parties to disclose any document which is directly relevant to an issue in the pleadings.

Practically, the distinction between the disclosure requirements can be significant, especially in instances where the respondent has knowledge of the risk of injury or their have been similar previous incidents.  In such instances the disclosure requirements of PIPA and similar legislation may allow a party to avoid disclosing documents relating the previous claims.  However, if the matter does not settle, the disclosure requirements of court proceedings may require such documents to be disclosed.  This could result in a substantially different settlement outcome.  Additionally, the applicable disclosure requirements should be considered before responding to time and resource consuming requests by a claimant fishing for potentially damaging documents.

 

Author: Colin Harris