The Public Liability Claim Process In WA, Step By Step

If you’re hurt in a public place in Western Australia, the public liability claim process runs on two state laws: the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1985 and the Civil Liability Act 2002. You have three years from the date your injury becomes known to start a claim, and you’ll need to prove that someone who controlled the place failed to take reasonable care. Most claims settle with an insurer, and never see a courtroom. But how much you recover, and whether you get anything at all for pain and suffering, turns on a threshold that catches a lot of people off guard. For 2025-26, your pain and suffering has to be assessed above roughly $26,500 before any of it is payable.

That single fact reshapes how you should approach a claim. So does the reason most claims fall over, which isn’t a missed deadline. Not every injury in a public place is someone else’s fault, though, and a straight answer about your prospects is the first thing a good lawyer owes you. Here’s how the process works, what it’s worth, and where it goes wrong.

What is a public liability claim?

A public liability claim is a compensation claim you make when you’re injured because a person or business that controlled a place failed to take reasonable care to keep it safe. In WA it’s a negligence claim brought under the Civil Liability Act 2002 and the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1985. It can cover your medical costs, lost income, and pain and suffering.

The name misleads people. The place doesn’t have to be “public.” What matters is who controlled it and whether they were careless. A slip in a shopping centre, a fall on a broken footpath, a dog attack in a park, a shelf that collapses in a store, an injury at a rental property: all of these can be public liability claims. So can a sporting injury caused by unsafe grounds or equipment. A private landlord, a local council, a café, a strata company: any of them can be the party at fault.

The public liability claim process in WA, step by step

The public liability claim process has six stages: get medical help and have every injury recorded, report the incident, gather evidence, identify who’s responsible and their insurer, lodge the claim, then negotiate a settlement or, in a minority of cases, go to court.

Step 1: Get medical help and record every injury. See a doctor the same day if you can, and tell them about every symptom, even the ones that seem minor. We’ve seen claims weakened because a sore shoulder went unmentioned at the first visit and surfaced as a serious problem months later. An injury that isn’t in the medical record early is an injury the insurer can dispute.

Step 2: Report the incident. Tell the occupier or the centre management and ask for a written incident report. Get the report number. If it happened on a council footpath or in a park, the council is the body to notify.

Step 3: Gather evidence. Photograph the hazard before it’s fixed, because a wet floor gets mopped and a broken step gets repaired, often within hours. Get names and numbers of witnesses. Keep your shoes if a slip is involved. Save receipts for anything you pay out of pocket.

Step 4: Identify who’s responsible. Work out who controlled the place: the occupier, a tenant, a cleaning contractor, or a council. A claim usually resolves against that party’s insurer, so pinning down the right respondent early saves months.

Step 5: Lodge the claim. Your lawyer sends the insurer a letter setting out what happened, the negligence, and a schedule of your losses. The insurer then either admits fault or denies it.

Step 6: Negotiate, then litigate only if you have to. If liability is accepted, the parties negotiate a settlement. Court is the exception, not the rule. One point we push hard with clients: on a serious injury, don’t rush to settle. It can take a year or more for an injury to stabilise, and you can’t put an accurate figure on a claim while your condition is still changing. Settle early and you settle cheap.

What you have to prove to win

You have to prove three things: that the occupier owed you a duty of care, that they breached it, and that the breach caused your injury.

Duty comes from the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1985, which requires the person in control of premises to take reasonable care that visitors aren’t injured by the state of the place or by things done or left undone. Breach is the practical fight: a spill left on the floor for two hours is a breach; a spill cleaned within minutes of being spotted usually isn’t. The Civil Liability Act 2002 sets out how a court weighs what a reasonable occupier should have done. Causation ties it together: you have to show the breach, not some other cause, produced the harm. If you want the mechanics in plain terms, we’ve set out the elements of negligence separately, along with how liability differs from a straight personal injury claim.

How long do you have to make a claim in WA?

Three years. Under the Limitation Act 2005, a personal injury claim in WA has to start within three years of the date you knew, or ought to have known, that you’d suffered a significant injury. That date isn’t always the accident date.

This trips people up. If you fall, feel fine, and only discover a disc injury when the pain sets in weeks later, the clock can start from when a reasonable person would have connected the injury to the fall. Claims for children and people under a legal incapacity run on different rules. And if a council is involved, there can be earlier notice steps to take. The safe move is to get advice well inside the three years, not on the eve of it, because evidence like CCTV is often wiped within weeks.

How much compensation can you get in 2026?

It depends on your losses, which split into two buckets: economic (things you can measure) and non-economic (pain and suffering). Economic losses have no threshold. Pain and suffering does. For 2025-26 it has to be assessed above about $26,500 before any of it is payable, and the maximum for the most serious cases is $501,000. Those figures come from the general-damages scale under the Civil Liability Act 2002 (WA), which the Insurance Commission of WA publishes in an indexed threshold schedule each financial year.

Here’s what that means in practice for a WA public liability payout:

What you can claim	Examples	Subject to the pain-and-suffering threshold?
Pain and suffering (non-economic loss)	Physical pain, loss of enjoyment of life, psychological harm	Yes. Nothing is payable unless it’s assessed above about $26,500 (2025-26)
Lost income and earning capacity	Wages already lost, reduced ability to work in future	No threshold
Medical and rehabilitation costs	Surgery, physio, medication, future treatment	No threshold
Gratuitous care	Unpaid help from family with daily tasks	Only above the separate care threshold (about $7,000 for 2025-26)

This threshold is why two people who had “the same” fall can walk away with very different results, and why an insurer’s first offer often lands low. If your injury sits near the line, the medical assessment of how serious it is decides whether you recover anything for the pain at all.

Why public liability claims get rejected in WA

The most common reason a claim fails isn’t a missed deadline. It’s that the occupier took reasonable care, or that you accepted an obvious risk.

WA law gives occupiers real defences. Under the Occupiers’ Liability Act, the duty owed to you shrinks when you willingly take on a known risk, and the Civil Liability Act says a person generally can’t recover for the materialisation of an “obvious risk” of a dangerous recreational activity. Slip on a clearly marked wet floor you chose to cross, and the argument runs that the risk was obvious and you accepted it. Fall doing something plainly risky, and the same logic applies. Contributory negligence is the other big one: if you were partly at fault, say you were looking at your phone, your payout drops by your share of the blame, sometimes to nothing.

None of this means a genuine claim should be waved away. It means the fight is usually about breach and obvious risk, not about whether you were hurt. That’s the part a generic online guide skips, and it’s the part our director Kevin Wong has handled since 1991, with a practice built on statutes like the Occupiers’ Liability Act and court experience from the District Court up to the High Court. Rebecca Sorgiovanni, who reviews this guide, acted for the family of a primary school boy who drowned on a school excursion, a negligence case about whether enough care was taken to keep a child safe.

What a public liability lawyer actually costs

At Soul Legal you pay no legal fees unless your claim succeeds. That’s the point of no win no fee: we take on the upfront cost of running your claim, and only charge for our legal work if you win. On a successful claim, the insurer also pays a party-and-party costs contribution that usually covers the bulk of our fees, so more of your settlement stays with you. Your first consultation is free, and if you decide not to proceed, there’s no charge.

We’re on the Legal Aid panel, and for clients who can’t travel because of their injuries, we do home and hospital visits. If you want to see how personal injury legal fees work before you commit, we’ve explained personal injury legal fees in detail. Legal Aid WA also publishes a plain-English guide to your rights when you’re injured on someone else’s property.

The public liability claim process rewards two things WA law makes non-obvious: hard proof that someone failed to take reasonable care, and the patience to let your injury settle before you put a number on it. Get the evidence early, get every injury documented, and get advice before you accept an insurer’s first figure. This guide is general information about WA law, not legal advice for your circumstances, so get advice on your own facts first. If you were hurt in a public place in Perth or Baldivis, call our team on (08) 6558 1786 or speak to our Perth team for a free, confidential review of your claim.

Frequently asked questions

What is the public liability claim process in WA?

It’s the steps to claim compensation after you’re injured because someone failed to keep a place safe: get medical treatment, report the incident, gather evidence, identify who’s responsible, lodge the claim with their insurer, and negotiate a settlement. Court is only needed if the insurer denies a genuine claim. It runs under the Civil Liability Act 2002 (WA) and the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1985 (WA).

How long do I have to make a public liability claim in WA?

Three years from the date you knew, or should have known, you’d suffered a significant injury, under the Limitation Act 2005 (WA). That isn’t always the accident date, and children and people under a legal incapacity have different rules. Get advice early, because evidence like CCTV is often erased within weeks.

How much can I claim for pain and suffering in WA?

For 2025-26, pain and suffering has to be assessed above about $26,500 before any amount is payable, up to a maximum of $501,000 for the most serious cases. These figures sit on the Civil Liability Act 2002 (WA) general-damages scale and are indexed each financial year by the Insurance Commission of WA.

What do I have to prove in a public liability claim?

Three things: the occupier owed you a duty of care, they breached it by failing to take reasonable precautions, and that breach caused your injury. Duty comes from the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1985 (WA), and the Civil Liability Act 2002 (WA) sets how a court judges reasonable care.

Why do public liability claims get rejected?

Most often because the occupier can show they took reasonable care, or because you accepted an obvious risk, which WA law treats as a defence. Contributory negligence, where you were partly at fault, can also cut your payout, sometimes to nothing. Weak or lost evidence is the other frequent reason.

Does the public liability claim process cost anything upfront?

Not at Soul Legal. We act on a no win no fee basis, so you pay no legal fees unless your claim succeeds, and the first consultation is free. On a win, we recover the bulk of your legal costs from the insurer as party-and-party costs.

What should I do straight after being injured in a public place?

See a doctor the same day and report every symptom, even minor ones. Report the incident to the occupier and get a written report, then photograph the hazard before it’s fixed and collect witness details. Those first 48 hours often decide how strong the claim is.