The most a Queensland court can award for pain and suffering is $494,150 for an injury that happened in the 2026-27 financial year, or $478,102 in a WorkCover claim against an employer. That maximum is reserved for the most catastrophic injuries. In the court judgments below, general damages ranged from $5,920 for a minor neck injury to $284,700 for an extreme brain injury, and in most of them they were a small part of the total award.
The general principle of damages is that a plaintiff who has been injured by the negligence of a defendant should be awarded such sum of money as will (as nearly as possible) put them in the same position as if they had not been injured.
A damages claim is not a free-ride, or a ticket to become an instant millionaire. The greater the injury’s impact to one’s life, the higher the damages. If an injury is temporary or largely insignificant, there may be minimal or no damages to be claimed at all – even if another party was at fault.
Heads of Damage
Pain and suffering, which the law calls general damages, is only one of the heads of damage in a personal injury claim. The others compensate lost earnings and superannuation, past and future; care and assistance, whether paid for or given free by family and friends; and medical and other out-of-pocket expenses. Lost earning capacity is usually the largest of them. Our Queensland compensation payouts page shows what whole claims are worth. This article is about general damages.
If you deal directly with an insurer, they will intentionally not tell you about your entitlements to these heads of damage. We have even seen insurers intentionally mislead injured victims about their rights and entitlements. For this reason, it is incredibly important not to attempt to negotiate with the insurer directly.
General Damages (Pain and Suffering)
The amount claimable for General Damages is determined by the legislation that applies to your Queensland personal injury claim.
- If you were injured at work, and are claiming against your employer, the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (WCRA) applies, with general damages set by the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Regulation 2025 (injury scale value ranges in schedule 14 and dollar amounts in schedule 17).
- If you were injured in a motor vehicle accident, the Motor Accident Insurance Act (MAIA) applies with damages determined by the Civil Liability Act 2003 and Civil Liability Regulation 2025 (with amounts indexed annually).
- If you were injured in a public or private place, or by the general negligence of someone else or a faulty product then the Personal Injuries Proceedings Act (PIPA) applies with damages determined by the Civil Liability Act 2003 and Civil Liability Regulation 2025 (with amounts indexed annually).
- If you were injured at work through the negligence of someone other than your employer, such as a host employer, a contractor or the maker of faulty equipment, your claim against them is often called a ‘hybrid claim’. Because the injury is covered by WorkCover, the Civil Liability Act 2003 does not apply to that claim (section 5), and the WorkCover damages rules govern only claims against your employer. Pain and suffering is then assessed under the common law, guided by previous court judgments, without the injury scale and without its cap. Injuries on a journey to or from work are an exception, and the Civil Liability Act does apply to them.
In all instances (other than common law circumstances – i.e. claims not captured by the above legislation), a person’s dominant injury is awarded an injury scale value (ISV) between 0 and 100. An ISV of 0 would mean that the dominant injury had fully healed and resolved and leaves no lasting or permanent damage to you – for example, a bruise. On the other hand, an ISV of 100 would mean that the dominant injury causes you permanent incapacity – for example, a brain or spinal injury causing quadriplegia. Independent medical examination reports (IME reports) assist the court in determining which ISV should apply.
The tables contained in the legislation that set out General Damage awards is indexed and updated annually to increase in line with inflation.
For an injury arising on or after 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027 (the 2026-27 financial year), the maximum General Damages (based on an ISV of 100) that can be awarded in Queensland by the Civil Liability Act 2003 (as indexed by the Civil Liability Indexation Notice 2026) is $494,150 or, in a WorkCover claim against an employer, by schedule 17 of the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Regulation 2025 is $478,102.
How is pain and suffering compensation calculated in Queensland?
For most claims the court follows the same four steps:
- It identifies your dominant injury. Where you have more than one injury, this is the one with the highest range in the regulation.
- It picks an ISV within that injury’s range. The regulation describes what belongs at the bottom and top of each range, and medical evidence such as whole person impairment ratings guides where you sit.
- It allows for your other injuries. Their combined effect can move the ISV higher in the dominant injury’s range. Where the impact is severe enough, the court can go above the top of that range, though it should rarely go more than 25% higher.
- It converts the ISV into dollars using the table for the financial year in which you were injured.
For an injury in the 2026-27 financial year, the conversion looks like this:
| ISV | General damages |
|---|---|
| 5 | $10,050 |
| 10 | $21,850 |
| 20 | $51,450 |
| 50 | $185,450 |
| 100 | $494,150 |
Civil Liability Act claims (car accidents, public liability, medical negligence) for an injury in the 2026-27 financial year. Source: Civil Liability Indexation Notice 2026, section 4. WorkCover claims against an employer use a separate table with their own figures.
To convert any other ISV, or an injury from an earlier year, use our ISV lookup.
Actual Court Awards for General Damages
Knowing the maximum award for General Damages is typically of little use considering how few claims it would apply to. We consider it more useful to know awards from actual Queensland court judgments:
| Case | ISV | General damages | Total damages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eustace v Dubrava [2023] QDC 100Car accident. Whiplash-type neck injury and secondary psychological injury in a rear-end car accident | 4 | $5,920 | $12,967 |
| Nkamba v Queensland Childcare Service [2022] QDC 292WorkCover. Ankle injury and secondary psychological injury at work | 10 | $15,650 | $197,014 |
| Baldock-Davis v Popham [2023] QSC 24Car accident. Rib, pelvis, neck and lower back injuries to a pedestrian hit by a car | 12 | $21,510 | $40,635 |
| Chapman v Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service [2022] QDC 271Medical negligence. Bowel perforation during a medical procedure | 13 | $21,780 | $201,770 |
| USM Events v James [2023] QCA 71Public liability. Mild brain injury and psychiatric injury to a competitor in an organised race | 16 | $28,800 | $1,062,351 |
| Wilson v Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service [2023] QSC 135WorkCover. Pelvis and hip injury and secondary psychological injury to a nurse not trained to restrain a patient | 20 | $25,150 | $1,634,419 |
| Habermann v Cook Shire Council [2025] QSC 214WorkCover. Psychiatric injury to a council employee after a fabricated email in her name was tabled in parliament | 25 | $49,650 | $2,359,038 |
| Dearden v Ryan [2022] QSC 111Public liability. Serious burns to a guest set alight at a party on a rural property | 38 | $95,670 | $600,798 |
| Walker v Greenmountain Food Processing [2020] QSC 329WorkCover. Moderate brain injury and other injuries from a fall of more than seven metres at work | 50 | $128,050 | $967,383 |
| Stewart v Metro North Hospital and Health Service [2025] HCA 34Medical negligence. Extreme brain injury from negligent hospital care | 85 | $284,700 | $5,883,689 |
General damages for the same ISV differ by scheme and by the year the injury happened. Stewart’s general damages were assessed at trial in [2024] QSC 41; the total is the final award after the High Court appeal.
Read more case decisions on Roche Legal’s Personal Injury Quantum Database (Qld)
As you can see, awards for General Damages are usually modest, and not truly reflective of the actual daily suffering an injury usually causes someone. However, total damages vary greatly. This is because a personal injury claim’s value is mostly influenced by the impact of the injury on a person’s ability to earn income – rather than the pain and suffering caused by the injury generally.
This pattern holds across the judgments we’ve catalogued. When we break down every dollar awarded in Queensland personal injury matters by what it actually compensates, the picture is stark: the overwhelming majority of damages compensate lost earning capacity (past and future economic loss), while general damages for pain and suffering make up only a small fraction of the total.
In other words, what your injury costs you in lost income – the work you can no longer do, the promotions you won’t get, the years of earning cut short – dwarfs what the law awards for the pain itself. It’s also why two people with similar injuries can recover vastly different amounts. The difference usually lies in their careers, not their suffering.
If you are unsure as to what ISV applies to your injury or want to know how to maximise your personal injury claim, contact Roche Legal for free initial advice or request a free claim check today.