The Wrongs Act 1958 and significant injury
The Wrongs Act 1958 is Victoria's principal statute governing common law claims for damages for personal injury and death outside the statutory TAC and WorkCover schemes, including public liability, occupiers liability and medical negligence claims.
Part VBA of the Act introduces a mandatory significant injury threshold for non-economic loss, so damages for pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life are only available where permanent impairment meets prescribed levels rather than in every case.
These thresholds are applied using prescribed assessment methodologies, commonly AMA-based impairment guides adapted to Victorian practice. In practice, this makes the quality and independence of the impairment assessment central to whether a Wrongs Act claim can proceed on a pain and suffering basis at all.
- More than 5 per cent impairment for injuries other than psychiatric or spinal injuries.
- 10 per cent or more impairment for psychiatric injury.
- 5 per cent or more impairment for spinal injury.
Certificates of Assessment and Section 28LN
Section 28LN of the Wrongs Act requires an approved medical practitioner who has assessed the degree of impairment for Part VBA purposes to give the injured person a Certificate of Assessment.
The approved medical practitioner must determine the degree of permanent impairment using appropriate guides and then issue a certificate stating whether the impairment meets or exceeds the relevant significant injury threshold, without stating the precise percentage on the certificate itself.
This structure separates a simple meets or does not meet threshold conclusion from the underlying analysis, allowing threshold questions to be streamlined while preserving the full medical reasoning for litigation, Medical Panel reference and negotiation.
Courts are constrained in their ability to award non-economic loss unless the statutory gateway has been satisfied, so the Certificate of Assessment effectively serves as the key that opens or closes access to pain and suffering damages.
Legal Spine Wrongs Act assessments
Legal Spine provides Wrongs Act impairment assessments and Certificates of Assessment for spinal and neurological injuries, with reports structured around the statutory requirements of Part VBA and Section 28LN.
- Explain the clinical diagnosis, natural history and current stability of the injuries, including whether maximum medical improvement has been reached.
- Summarise the impairment calculation pathway under the AMA Guides as modified by Victorian regulations and practice.
- Show how the injury is classified, how tables and criteria are applied, and how the final impairment percentage is derived.
- Distinguish clearly between spinal, psychiatric and other injuries where different thresholds apply.
Multiple injuries and threshold reasoning
Where multiple injuries are present, such as spinal injury, peripheral nerve damage and a pain-related psychiatric condition, the report sets out separate impairment considerations for each.
The analysis identifies the relevant thresholds and explains how combination rules and apportionment principles have been applied. The accompanying Certificate of Assessment under Section 28LN then distils this analysis into the required binary statement about whether the significant injury threshold has been met.
This approach allows practitioners, courts and Medical Panels to understand which components contribute to the significant injury gateway and which do not, without confusing the certificate itself with the more detailed medical report.
Work capacity, return to work and TPD
Parallel to Wrongs Act work, Legal Spine conducts Work Capacity and Return-to-Work examinations for WorkSafe, self-insurers and employers, recognising that statutory schemes increasingly link long-term weekly payments and rehabilitation obligations to sustainable capacity for work rather than to diagnosis alone.
These assessments examine not only whether a claimant can physically and cognitively perform pre-injury duties, but also whether modified duties or alternative roles are realistically sustainable within the employer's environment or the broader labour market.
In forming these opinions, Dr Aliashkevich considers likely future deterioration or improvement in light of contemporary neurosurgical and rehabilitation options, including minimally invasive surgery, motion-preserving spinal procedures, multidisciplinary pain programmes and cognitive rehabilitation where brain injury is involved.
The analysis integrates structural findings on imaging, neurological examination, neurophysiological testing and the claimant's functional history to provide a nuanced view of what is sustainable in practice rather than in theory.
Total and Permanent Disability assessments
The practice also performs Total and Permanent Disability assessments in the context of income protection and superannuation claims, where trust deeds and policy definitions often require a judgment about whether the claimant is unlikely ever to return to work in their own occupation or any occupation for which they are reasonably suited.
In this setting, Legal Spine reports explore the interaction between physical restrictions, cognitive or neurological sequelae such as fatigue, attention and executive dysfunction, and broader psychosocial factors that impact employability, while remaining grounded in objective neurosurgical and functional evidence.
Integrated neurosurgical reasoning across regimes
By combining guideline-based impairment ratings with detailed vocational analysis, Legal Spine provides courts, insurers and trustees with reports that support defensible decisions on economic loss, TPD thresholds and the appropriateness of vocational rehabilitation programmes.
This integrated approach ensures that Wrongs Act significant injury determinations, WorkSafe capacity decisions and TPD evaluations are all informed by the same careful neurosurgical reasoning, adapted to the legal questions each regime asks rather than forced into a one-size-fits-all template.
- Sustainable capacity for pre-injury duties, modified duties or alternative roles.
- Likely future deterioration or improvement in light of contemporary neurosurgical and rehabilitation options.
- Interaction between physical restrictions, cognitive or neurological sequelae and broader employability factors.