WorkCover barrister bill $38m

By Fergus Shiel Law ReporterJuly 28, 2004

The Victorian WorkCover Authority has been accused of mis-spending millions of dollars to employ senior barristers to act against injured workers in court cases.

Unionists and plaintiff lawyers have expressed outrage over internal WorkCover figures revealing spending of nearly $38 million on barristers, including almost $18 million on QCs and SCs, in the three years to May.

WorkCover denies any mis-spending, saying its $6 billion scheme is being run cost-effectively and it must defend against fraudulent claims.

Victorian Trades Hall assistant secretary Nathan Niven said yesterday that he was shocked by the spending on counsel and mystified by the proportion that had gone to QCs.
"We are not talking High Court international law stuff here. "For them (the authority) to be using QCs is absolutely excessive. It is over the top," he said.
Mr Niven said unions had often expressed concern to the Government in the past over the authority's spending on legal counsel but "the rich are getting richer and the injured are not being cared for".

The Victorian president of the Australian Plaintiff Lawyers Association, Simon Garnett, said the spending on senior counsel was indiscriminate. "There is an excessive overuse of counsel," he said. "There is a lot of money being spent on barristers' fees which I think shouldn't be spent."

But the authority has strongly defended its legal spending. A spokeswoman for the authority said barristers had acted for the authority in 11,000 court cases in the past three years with senior counsel acting in about a fifth of those cases.
She said the authority sought to resolve matters in conciliation wherever possible but often used legal counsel where an employee's credibility was at issue. (what about the employers as well or dont workcover question employers credibility?)

Over the past year, the authority had delivered $130 million in extra impairment benefits to workers and a 10 per cent cut in employers' premium, she said. She added that the figures detailing $37.6 million in authority spending on legal counsel from May 2001 to April 30, 2004 were only "preliminary" and had to be viewed in the context of WorkCover being a multibillion-dollar scheme.

But personal injury specialist Harry Nowicki accused the authority of briefing senior counsel in relatively simple cases, saying it appeared that the authority did so to intimidate injured workers. "We think it was a policy (introduced) to intimidate plaintiffs and their representatives," said Mr Nowicki, a senior partner with Nowicki Carbone & Co.
"Silks should only be for the most difficult and complicated cases," he said.