Content supplied by the Insurance Council
New Zealanders may very well be personally liable to top-up ACC compensation if they are convicted of any criminal offence that causes bodily injury to another person, says the Insurance Council of New Zealand.
From 6 December, as a result of the Sentencing Amendment Act 2014, if you’re convicted of an offence causing injury, the Courts could increase the amount of reparations to pay.
“Many New Zealanders will be blissfully unaware that from this Saturday if, for example, they commit a motoring offence or a breach of health and safety legislation that causes personal injury to someone else they could be forced to pay reparations over and above ACC compensation limits,” says Insurance Council Chief Executive Tim Grafton.
ACC currently limits loss of income payments to 80% of their income and no more than $1,818 a week.
“This means that if you caused the injury to someone, the Courts could require higher payments to be made by the guilty party,” Mr Grafton says.
“This creates a double standard in treatment where those suffering an injury as a result of a motoring offence, for example, have the potential to gain greater compensation than those suffering the same injury when no offence was involved or no-one was prosecuted,” he said.
Exposure to higher reparations orders can extend to many other areas, such as health and safety breaches in the workplace, breaching the Dog Control Act or many other instances where an offence results in bodily injury.
These could include accidents resulting from the use of unregistered vehicles such as cycles or adventure tourism accidents where an offence has been committed.
“It also opens up compensation to overseas visitors. So, you wouldn’t want to cause a crash that badly injures a tour coach of well-heeled foreign tourists for example,” says Grafton.
“Insurance companies will be closely monitoring developments and some may consider changes to policies to cover the exposures from this Act.”
9 Comments
This is indeed a backward step and the beginning of the end of ACC in my view. This a shame because ACC may not be perfect but it's better than the alternative by a long way. Stephen, it wasn't a law change sought by lawyers; most weren't even aware of it. I believe it is a Judith Collins 'special'.
it's a mechanism to get at the residental housing and agricultural "#8 wire" sector.
re: residential housing, by bring in this far reaching and totally indirect duty of care, then the property owner can be forced to certified their property regularly to paper their ass against spurious claims from tenants and tenants vistors. Without a "House WOF" you have no way to "prove" you were taking "all reasonable care" to minimise risk. Having a piece of paper from someone willing to sign it and pay a bit of xinghui to the government through official channels, is the only valid form of Protection that will be recognised by the Government against any claims. Likely we'll see such empowered officials charge a % of capital value for their important services - which will gouge the cities quite heavily.
Acc is going to a big problem for many employers in NZ. Just a nightmare of unknown consequences.
Then we get the new Health and Safety law, which is going to make employers wake up in a cold sweat, my bank manager is worried about implications for farmers.
I'm going to have to keep a record of all vehicle servicing and it needs to be up to date. Weekly checks of things like motorbike tyre pressure and brakes. A map of no go areas on the farm and on and on.
http://www.prlaw.co.nz/article/124/111/Health-Safety-Reform-Bill/
Offences
The Bill creates three offence tiers relating to breaches of the health and safety duties. The offences and the respective maximum penalties can be summarised as follows:
- Reckless Conduct (has a duty and exposes any person to whom the duty is owed to risk of death or serious injury/illness and is reckless as to that risk) – fines up to $3 million (or $600,000 and/or up to five years’ imprisonment for individuals).
- Failure to comply with a Duty (with exposure to risk of death or serious injury/illness) – fines up to $1.5 million (or $300,000 for individuals).
- Failure to comply with a Duty (no exposure to death or serious injury/illness) – fines up to $500,000 (or $100,000 for individuals).
In addition to the fines and imprisonment that may be imposed, the Bill provides for new orders which the court may impose at sentencing:
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Asingleincidentcouldpossiblyresultinemployees,managers,directorsandthecompanyitselfallbeingpenalised.Theproposedfinesarehighenoughtohaveseverefinancialimplicationsforaseriousbreachbyasmallormediumsizedbusiness.
https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/lawtalk/lawtalk-archives/issue-841/a-summ…
And still zero responsibility for the engineers and mechanics that failed to repair my tractor (and only know how to ccharge for all revisits) or my motorcycles. What brakes?
And STILL zero responsibiity for the operator who has the on-the-spot observation and power to make choices. I'm all for legally allowing employees to refuse to operate or enter areas which they consider unsafe .... a law which _already_ exists.
The Bear's Lair: If innovation dies, it was killed by regulation
http://www.prudentbear.com/2014/12/the-bears-lair-if-innovation-dies-it…
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