Injury compensation lawyer Marks Point

In everyday speech, a serious injury is one that hurts a lot or takes a long time to heal. The CTP scheme uses narrower tests. The first is whether the injury is more than a threshold injury. The second, for some kinds of compensation, is how much permanent impairment it leaves, measured as whole person impairment. Pain matters to you, but the scheme looks at diagnosis and lasting effect.

A serious injury can change more than the next few months of work. It can limit the kind of work you can do for years, or permanently. In a damages claim, that is called loss of future earning capacity, and it can be a significant part of a serious injury claim. It generally needs medical evidence, your work history and sometimes vocational experts.

People are often surprised by how technical WPI is. It is assessed under guidelines that rate specific impairments, such as lost movement in a joint, and express the result as a whole-body percentage. More than 10% is the key line in CTP claims, because damages for non-economic loss, meaning pain and suffering, are only available above it. Loss of earnings doesn't need that level.

Because so much can turn on a few percentage points, WPI assessments are often contested. Reports prepared for you, for the insurer and, if there's a dispute, by a medical assessor through the Personal Injury Commission may reach different figures. Keep every report, and get advice before accepting an assessment you think is wrong.

In a serious injury claim, impairment often comes into focus well after the crash, once the injury has stabilised. The Personal Injury Commission handles medical assessment where the insurer and the injured person disagree. If you think an assessment is wrong, the steps to challenge it are set out separately, and the deadlines are short, so act promptly.

• How complete and current the evidence is
• Any assessment already made, and its date
• Changes in your condition since the last report

Serious physical injuries often bring a psychological toll: sleeplessness, anxiety, depression or trauma symptoms. These can be part of your claim in their own right. Make sure how you're coping is on the record, not just your physical injuries. Whether a psychological injury is threshold or more is a medical and legal question, and the insurer's decision on it can be reviewed.

The definition works by exclusion. An injury is generally threshold if it is soft tissue damage with no nerve damage and no torn tendon, ligament, meniscus or cartilage, whether the tear is complete or not, or if it is a psychological injury the scheme classes as threshold. Injuries outside that description, such as fractures, torn ligaments or brain injuries, are generally more than threshold.

Which side you're on matters. For accidents from 1 April 2023, statutory benefits for a threshold injury generally last up to 52 weeks. For accidents between 1 December 2017 and 31 March 2023, the limit was 26 weeks. If your injury is more than threshold and you weren't mostly at fault, benefits can generally continue for longer, and a damages claim may be possible.

The most persuasive serious injury claims usually have consistent evidence: the same injuries described the same way from the first record to the last, with no unexplained gaps. That consistency comes from giving the full story every time you describe the injury. If a report leaves something out, raise it rather than letting it pass, and keep a note of when you did.

• The police report and your own account of the crash
• Every Certificate of Fitness, in order
• A diary of how the injury affects daily life
• Any impairment assessment, and your response to it