The world's best system of compensating injury?

Abstract

One of the unique things about New Zealand, along with flightless birds and an absence of poisonous creatures, is its no fault scheme for compensating accidental injury. Since 1974 anybody injured in an accident has had no need to take legal action : he or she is compensated by the Accident Compensation Corporation (previously Commission), a statutory body. About 130 000 claims a year are dealt with by the Accident Compensa? tion Corporation (in a country of three million people) and it is, indeed, impossible to bring a common law action for personal injury. Problems persist with the scheme (particularly over defining what is an accident and what is not), but it works, and most New Zealanders are convinced that it will continue; nobody will put the clock back. Lawyers, insurers, social reformers, academics, and journalists journey from all over the world to look at the scheme; members of the British Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury (the Pearson Commission) went there in September 1975.r (This was too early, I was told, both because little experience had been generated and because the new commissioners were anxious that the new scheme should be seen only in the best light.) The Pearson Commission reported on British problems in 1978, but most of its proposals remain on the drawing board.2 The problems, however, persist. I recently joined the flow of journalists to New Zealand to look at the Accident Compensation Corporation scheme. I wanted primarily to look at the New Zealand way of compensat? ing drug injury, but I took the opportunity to look also at the general working of the scheme and the particular problems of compensating for medical misadventure. This first article will describe the whole scheme, a second article will consider the problems with the scheme, and a third article will look at the particular problems of compensation for drug injury and medical misadventure. My information comes from the many members of the Accident Compensation Corporation whom I met; from independent lawyers, doctors, and academics; and from books, articles, and reports. In addition to the government reports I have found three books particularly useful: Compensation for Inequality: a Study of Law and Social Change in New Zealand and Australia* by Geoffrey Palmer, a former professor of law at Victoria University in Wellington, and now a New Zealand member of Parliament; Accident Compensation* by Terence G I son, a Canadian professor of law who spent three months in New Zealand studying the scheme; and Accident Compensation Coverage5 by J L Fahy, who is now the managing director of the Accident Compensation Corporation.