Published: 28 September 2018
Author: Dan McGlade

Why it's important to list all your injuries on a TAC claim form

If you’ve been in a road accident it is understandable that you are primarily concerned with any major injuries you may have suffered. That is fine, but when it comes time to fill in your TAC injury claim form, it’s extremely important to list all your injuries. I will explain why.

Little attention is given to lesser or minor injuries, but in completing the claim form a person needs to include every injury that they've suffered even if it's just a cut or a bruise.

The reason for that is that down the track what might have seemed the lesser injury or even an insignificant injury might manifest itself in a more serious way and to the point where the injury is giving the person problems and is needing treatment.

But if the TAC have not been made aware of that injury from the outset they're likely to resist acceptance of liability for the injury if it wasn't on the claim form in the first place. They will ask the obvious question: "Well how do we know this was related to the accident? If it was related to the accident surely you would have included that on the claim form?"

So all of a sudden you're on the back-foot in trying to convince the TAC to accept liability for that injury.

Allied to that, it’s very important that, if a person becomes aware of what appeared to be a lesser injury and it might not have been included on their claim form, or even it was included on their claim form but it's starting to cause some more trouble and more problems, they need to let their doctor know about it. Very often the doctor too has just been focused on what were the more pressing and immediate injuries following the motor vehicle accident and hasn't taken a history of the bump on the head or the knock to the knees or whatever it might be. So the person in that situation needs to make sure their doctor does get that history promptly and investigates it promptly.

Because the situation is that the more time is allowed to elapse between the date of the accident and the reporting of that injury, the more likely TAC is to dispute liability.

You don’t want to be in that position when you are trying to recover from a road accident.