If Queensland, if you suffer injury and make a compensation claim, the insurance company may put you under surveillance. There is a very real possibility that they will engage a private investigator to follow you and take video footage of your movements. This is especially so if you make a workcover claim or a motor vehicle accident compensation claim. Protect yourself and your rights by following a very simple rule: if you make a claim after an injury, never lie about your symptoms and limitations and always answer questions honestly.

Why WorkCover (and other insurers) get surveillance?

The purpose of surveillance  is very simple. The insurance company wants to show that you have committed fraud. Or, at the very least, that you have exaggerated your symptoms.

For example, let’s say you go on workcover because of an injury. You tell WorkCover Queensland that you are unable to work. WorkCover Queensland pays you weekly compensation. While getting weekly compensation, if you then engage in work without informing WorkCover, this will be considered fraud. One reason to put surveillance on you is to catch you doing work.  (A word of warning: WorkCover will consider any activity as work which usually attracts pay or remuneration, regardless of whether you actually receive payments. This means even if you start your own business without getting any pay would count as work.)

How can surveillance impact your claim?

How surveillance footage impacts your claim depends on what the footage actually shows. In many cases, it shows nothing of significance. In some cases though, the footage can be devastating. In other cases, the footage is “not good” but it can still be possible to save your claim.

For example, if you make a workcover claim and the footage shows fraud, you lose any entitlement to compensation and damages. Please note that this is not automatic. Rather, the Workers’ Compensation Regulator must bring charges against you as part of a criminal prosecution and the court must find you guilty of fraud. If you are found guilty of fraud, then in addition to losing your rights to compensation or damages, you also face criminal penalties.

Staying with WorkCover claims, let’s take another example. During your workcover claim, WorkCover can send you for an independent medical examination.  At the examination you tell the doctor that you can’t walk for longer than 10 minutes. Then the surveillance taken on the same day shows you walking without much difficulty for over an hour. In these types of situations WorkCover may not be confident enough that they could prove fraud. Instead, they might allege that you have made misleading statements.

In a situation like this, there are two very significant consequences. Firstly, criminal charges may be brought and a court may impose criminal penalties. Secondly, even though you don’t lose your right to compensation and damages, but if you take your compensation claim to court, the judge will view the footage and if he or she thinks that you have lied about your symptoms, the damages award will be much smaller than it otherwise would have been. It can be hundreds of thousands of dollars less than what you otherwise would have received.

The rules are very similar in motor vehicle accident claims.

When will insurers arrange surveillance?

It is important to realise that the insurance company can decide to put you under surveillance at any time. That said, here are some tricks to bear in mind:

Independent Medical Examinations

Insurance companies will often arrange an Independent Medical Examination. This is for you to be examined by one of their panel doctors. They will tell you the place and time to attend for the examination. When you arrive at the examination, you will be seated in the waiting room until the doctor calls you in. Surveillance often starts here. The “operative” starts filming you in the waiting room and they follow you for a few hours or a few days. You don’t want to be like the guy who walked out from the examination using his walking sticks, but when he saw his train was arriving to the train station he threw away the walking sticks and started to run after it…

Travel

If you live in regional Queensland, the insurance company might arrange a medical examination for you in Brisbane and they will pay for your travel (e.g., flights and/or a hotel) as part of a medical examination.

It is possible that they will also arrange for a private investigator to follow you. This is because they know which flight you will be on and this is a chance to follow you from the airport. Say, for example, you fly from Cairns to Brisbane for a medical. They might follow you from your home in Cairns to the airport, fly with you, and follow you throughout your trip in Brisbane. (This is based on one of our cases).

If this sounds like an invasion of privacy to you, that’s because it is. Unfortunately, however, this is not illegal.

Where to from here

If you want to get sound legal advice about your injury claim, please get in touch with us on (07) 3063 2268 or email info@deneslawyers.com.au and we will be happy to help.

We offer a free consultation with Oszkar Denes, our principal solicitor who has significant experience in acting for plaintiffs. Before that, he used to represent insurance companies so he knows all their tactics.