Public Liability Claims in Queensland: The Civil Liability Act, PIPA and Injury Thresholds

In Queensland, a public liability claim for an injury in a shop, park, rental property or on a footpath is an ordinary negligence claim under the Civil Liability Act 2003, and for most claims a strict pre-court process under the Personal Injuries Proceedings Act 2002 has to run before the claim can reach court.

Who you claim against and what this claim covers

A public liability claim in Queensland is a negligence claim brought against whoever controlled the place or activity where the injury happened: a shop, a shopping centre, a pub or venue, a landlord, an event organiser, or a local council responsible for a park or footpath. The claim is governed by the Civil Liability Act 2003 (CLA), which sets the negligence rules, the available defences, and how general damages are calculated. In practice, the claim is usually answered by that occupier's or business's public liability insurer rather than paid out of their own pocket, and the pre-court notice process described below expressly contemplates giving notice to the insurer as well as to the occupier.

This is a different claim from a workplace injury, which runs through Queensland's separate workers compensation scheme (see our guide to workers compensation in Queensland), and from a motor vehicle injury, which runs through the state's compulsory third party (CTP) scheme (see motor accident compensation in Queensland). Where the injury results in death, a different set of rules applies; see wrongful death claims in Queensland.

The occupier's duty: ordinary negligence, not a codified Act

Queensland has no equivalent to the codified occupiers' liability regimes used in some other states. An occupier's duty to an entrant, including a trespasser, is governed by ordinary common law negligence principles as filtered through the CLA's general duty provisions, rather than a dedicated occupiers' liability Act setting out separate duty categories for different kinds of visitor. Whatever a person's status when they were injured, the same negligence framework in sections 9 to 12 of the CLA applies.

Under section 9, an occupier does not breach a duty of care unless the risk of harm was foreseeable (known, or something they ought reasonably to have known about), the risk was not insignificant, and a reasonable person in their position would have taken precautions against it. In deciding what a reasonable person would do, a court weighs the probability the harm would occur, how serious it would likely be, the burden of taking precautions against it, and the social usefulness of whatever activity created the risk. Section 10 adds that the fact a risk could have been avoided in a different way does not by itself create liability for how it was actually handled, and that fixing a hazard after an injury is not itself an admission of fault.

Sections 11 and 12 cover causation: the claimant has to show the breach was a necessary condition of the harm actually occurring, and that it is appropriate for the occupier's responsibility to extend to that harm. The claimant carries the onus of proving every element on the balance of probabilities.

Obvious risk, inherent risk and dangerous recreational activities

The CLA gives occupiers several risk-based defences that can significantly narrow or defeat a claim. A risk is obvious under section 13 if a reasonable person in the injured person's position would have seen it, including risks that are common knowledge, even if the risk had a low probability of occurring or was not visually conspicuous. If an occupier raises voluntary assumption of risk, section 14 presumes the injured person was aware of an obvious risk unless they prove otherwise, and awareness of the general type of risk is enough, even without knowing its precise nature or how it would occur. Section 15 removes any proactive duty to warn of an obvious risk, unless the injured person specifically asked for advice, a law required the warning, or the defendant is a non-medical professional and the risk involves death or personal injury from the professional service.

Section 16 goes further for a genuinely inherent risk, one that cannot be avoided by the exercise of reasonable care and skill: an occupier is not liable in negligence for harm it causes at all, though this does not remove any separate duty to warn about it. The strongest defence sits in sections 17 to 19, covering dangerous recreational activities, meaning an activity engaged in for enjoyment, relaxation or leisure that involves a significant degree of risk of physical harm. Under section 19, an occupier is not liable for harm from the materialisation of an obvious risk of a dangerous recreational activity, whether or not the injured person actually knew about the risk at the time, a materially stronger protection than the rebuttable-awareness approach in section 14.

Claims against a council: the road authority protection

A council or other public authority gets specific statutory protection when it is sued over a road, and Queensland's definition of a road for this purpose comes from the transport legislation (Civil Liability Act s37(3)). Section 35 already limits what a court can expect of a public authority, since its resourcing decisions and general allocation of functions are not open to challenge, and section 36 sets a high bar for any claim based on a failure to exercise a function, requiring the failure to have been so unreasonable that no authority with the same functions could properly have considered it reasonable.

Section 37 goes further specifically for roads: a public or other authority acting as a road authority is not liable for failing to repair a road, keep it in repair, or inspect it to decide whether repair is needed. That protection falls away only if the authority had actual knowledge of the particular risk that caused the injury at the time of the alleged failure, a knowledge test that is genuinely hard for a claimant to meet without evidence the council was specifically told about, or had otherwise recorded, the exact hazard that hurt them.

Intoxication and criminal conduct

Sections 45 to 49 create a set of hurdles aimed at an injured person's own conduct. Under section 45, no civil liability is incurred at all if a court is satisfied the breach happened while the injured person was engaged in conduct amounting to an indictable offence and that conduct materially contributed to the risk of harm, regardless of whether they were ever charged or convicted. A court can still award damages if the bar would operate harshly and unjustly, but if it does, the award must still be reduced by at least 25 percent.

Intoxication does not by itself create or remove a duty of care, or change the standard of care an occupier owes, under section 46, though this does not affect the ordinary duty of care owed by a licensed venue. Under section 47, contributory negligence is presumed if the injured person was intoxicated and the occupier alleges it, rebuttable only by proving the intoxication did not contribute to the breach or was not self-induced. Unless rebutted, damages must be reduced by at least 25 percent, rising to a minimum of 50 percent where the injured person was a driver with 150 milligrams or more of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, or was otherwise too impaired to control the vehicle. A similar presumption in section 48 applies to a claimant who relied on the care and skill of someone they knew, or should have known, was intoxicated.

The pre-court process under PIPA

Most public liability claims in Queensland, other than CTP and workers compensation injuries which run their own separate pre-court regimes, are directly subject to the Personal Injuries Proceedings Act 2002 (PIPA). Part 1 of a notice of claim generally has to be given within the earlier of two dates: 9 months after the incident (or after symptoms first appear, if they were not immediately apparent), or 1 month after the claimant first instructs a lawyer to act for them, once the respondent is identified. Missing that window does not extinguish the claim, but the claimant then has to give a reasonable excuse for the delay.

Once notice has been given and information exchanged, PIPA requires a compulsory conference between the parties before court proceedings can start, generally available from 6 months after a complying notice was given. Proceedings then generally need to start within 60 days of that conference (or its dispensation), and missing that window does not automatically bar the claim, though the court can order the claimant to pay delay-related costs, or, on the occupier's application, set a hard deadline that does bar the claim if missed. Where the ordinary 3-year limitation period is about to expire, giving a complying Part 1 notice before it runs out can extend the window to start proceedings for up to 6 months after that notice, or longer with the court's leave.

What compensation covers: the injury scale value system

General damages for pain and suffering in Queensland use an injury scale value (ISV), a single figure from 0 to 100 that a court assigns having regard to rules in a regulation and to ISVs given in similar past cases, where 0 reflects an injury too minor to justify any award and 100 reflects the gravest conceivable kind of injury. The Civil Liability Regulation 2025 sets out how to work out an injury's ISV and gives ranges for named injury types.

The dollar value attached to each ISV point is fixed separately every financial year by a ministerial indexation notice. Under the Civil Liability Indexation Notice 2025, current for the 2025-26 financial year, the maximum general damages figure at an ISV of 100 is $484,100. That figure is replaced by a new notice each 1 July, so it should always be checked against whichever notice is current when a claim is actually being valued.

Contributory negligence and time limits

A court decides contributory negligence using the same reasonable-person principles that decide whether the occupier breached its own duty, judged by what the injured person knew or ought to have known at the time. Under section 24, a court can reduce damages by up to 100 percent if it considers that just and equitable, which can defeat the claim entirely, even outside the specific intoxication and criminal-conduct presumptions described above.

Separately from PIPA's own procedural deadlines, court proceedings for damages generally need to start within 3 years of the date the cause of action arose, under the Limitation of Actions Act 1974. A person under a disability, such as a child or a person lacking capacity, has until 3 years after the disability ends for a personal injury claim: section 29(2)(c) of the Limitation of Actions Act 1974 specifically caps personal injury and fatal claims at 3 years, not the general 6-year disability extension that applies to other kinds of claims. A discoverability extension can also apply in some circumstances.

What this claim is not

A public liability claim covers an injury outside the workplace and outside a motor vehicle accident. A workplace injury runs through workers compensation in Queensland instead, and a motor vehicle injury runs through the state's CTP scheme. Where the injury results in death, see wrongful death claims in Queensland. An injury on common property in a strata or body corporate scheme can also raise separate obligations on the owners corporation; see our guide to strata law in Australia. A dispute with a landlord over the condition of a rental property is generally a tenancy issue rather than a public liability claim, and a dispute between neighbours over a fence or a tree is generally a neighbour dispute rather than a public liability one. For how Queensland's rules compare with the general Australian position on civil time limits, see our guide to the statute of limitations in Australia. For the wider picture across every state and territory, see our Australia public liability guide.