If you want to make a workcover claim after a Queensland work injury, it’s important to remember that there are important deadlines.

The deadlines

To make a workers’ compensation claim, you must lodge an application for compensation within 6 months. If WorkCover accepts your claim, they will pay your weekly wages as well as your medical and rehabilitation expenses. There is a separate procedure if you want to make a common law damages claim, which usually happens later.  To make a common law damages claim, the deadline is usually 3 years.

When you make the workcover claim, WorkCover can backdate its payments so that the period between the injury date and the date on which you have made your claim is covered. However, if you make the workcover claim more than 20 days after the injury happened, WorkCover Queensland has no obligation to backdate payments by more than 20 days.  In other words, if you don’t want to miss out on any payments, it’s best to make a claim within 20 days.

Are there exceptions?

Yes. If you have missed the 6 months rule, but the Medical Assessment Tribunal considers that there are special circumstances in your case, then WorkCover must waive the 6 months deadline.

Also, if a doctor, nurse or dentist assesses that your injury has resulted in a total or partial incapacity to work AND you make the workcover claim within 20 days of that assessment, then WorkCover may waive the 6 months deadline.

Finally, both the 6 months deadline and the 20 day rule can be waived if WorkCover Queensland is satisfied that your non-compliance with the timeframes was a mistake, or you were absent from Queensland or you had some other reasonable cause for the delay.

WorkCover says my application for compensation is out of time. They won’t waive the deadline. What now?

If WorkCover decided to reject the application only because it was lodged out of time, and they are not prepared to waive the deadline, you still have one possible avenue left. You can still request WorkCover to send you to a doctor to assess your Degree of Whole Person Impairment. After that, you can request WorkCover to issue a Notice of Assessment.

A Notice of Assessment is an important document. It allows you to seek common law damages for your injuries. It’s crucial to get this document otherwise you can’t claim common law damages.

Unfortunately, this solution is not perfect because WorkCover won’t pay your weekly wages and your current medical bills. However, at least your common law rights are still protected. And if you suffered serious injuries due to your employer’s fault, then after you have obtained a Notice of Assessment using the above process, you will be able to make a common law damages claim.  (According to most recent data, the average settlement payout in a common law damages claim is almost $190,000.)

Finally, if WorkCover rejected your compensation application because it was lodged out of time, we recommend that you seek legal advice before you take any further steps. This area of law has been the subject of a number of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions which provide guidance to solicitors on how to navigate these situations.

25% Cap on legal costs

In all of our personal injury compensation matters, we act on a  No Win – No Fee basis. What that means is, there’s no upfront cost to you.

In Queensland, most compensation firms will charge you 50% of your compensation amount – the maximum allowed at law. This is very expensive. Our fee is different. We will cap our fee at 25% . Remember also, these are the maximum fees we will charge. If our fee in your claim is less, then we charge the lesser amount.

Before you engage us, we will provide you a written Disclosure Notice and a Client Service Agreement. These documents set out in detail the service we provide, as well as our fees and outlays. Before you sign anything, you can take these documents home with you, and study them with your family. You can take as long as you need, there is never any pressure from us. If anything in these documents doesn’t make sense to you, we can discuss it with you and you are free to ask another lawyer to give you advice.  And remember, no win – no fee agreements come with a 5 day cooling off period for extra peace of mind.