Public Liability Claims in the ACT: The Civil Law (Wrongs) Act 2002, Codified Occupiers and Notice Deadlines

A public liability claim in the Australian Capital Territory is a negligence claim under the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act 2002, brought against the occupier, business, event organiser or public authority responsible for the property or activity where you were hurt.

This page is part of our broader guide to public liability claims in Australia, which compares the ACT's approach against every other state and territory. The ACT's law differs from NSW's in three genuine ways worth knowing up front: its occupiers' duty is fully written into the Act rather than left to common law, it has no general obvious risk defence regime, and it requires a pre-court notice most states do not.

Who You Claim Against, and Under Which Law

There is no ACT equivalent of a separate "Civil Liability Act." A public liability claim in the ACT, whether against a shop, a venue, a landlord, an event organiser or a government agency, runs through the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act 2002, a single consolidated statute covering negligence generally (Chapter 4), occupiers' liability (Chapter 12, Part 12.1), public authority protections (Chapter 8), and pre-court procedure (Chapter 5), among other civil wrongs.

The Occupier's Duty: Fully Codified, Unlike NSW

Occupiers' liability in the ACT is not left to common law the way it is in NSW. Chapter 12, Part 12.1, section 168, "Liability of occupiers," sets a direct statutory duty: an occupier must take all care reasonable in the circumstances to ensure that anyone on the premises does not suffer injury or damage from the state of the premises, or from things done or not done about it. The section does not, on its face, limit that duty to lawful entrants; it applies to "anyone on the premises."

Section 168(2) lists factors a court must weigh in deciding whether that duty was discharged: the gravity and likelihood of the injury, the circumstances of the entrant's entry, the nature of the premises, whether the occupier knew or should have known people were likely to be present, the entrant's age and ability to appreciate the danger, and the burden of removing or protecting against the risk compared with the risk itself. Section 168(4) is explicit that this statutory standard "replaces the common law rules about the standard of care" an occupier owes, a full displacement rather than a supplement, though section 168(5) preserves other common law occupier rules not about the standard of care itself, along with any separate statutory or contractual duties. "Occupier" is defined broadly enough in section 168(6) to include a landlord with a repair obligation or a right to enter for maintenance.

No General Obvious Risk or Recreational Activity Defence

A recreational venue or activity operator in the ACT cannot rely on the kind of statutory obvious risk or dangerous recreational activity defence available in NSW. A search of the whole Civil Law (Wrongs) Act for obvious risk, inherent risk, recreational activity, risk warning and dangerous recreational activity language turns up only one narrow, activity-specific provision: Schedule 3, "Equine activities," which bars liability for a participant's injury from the inherent risks of equine activities, subject to exceptions for faulty equipment, an unsuitable-mount assessment failure, an undisclosed dangerous latent land condition, or reckless or intentional conduct, and which requires a prescribed warning notice at the facility and in written contracts.

Outside that narrow equine carve-out, the ACT has no general obvious risk defence, no statutory dangerous recreational activity bar, and no statutory risk warning shield of the kind NSW's sections 5F to 5N provide. An operator in the ACT relies on ordinary negligence principles, sections 42 to 44, and the common law defence of voluntary assumption of risk, which the Act's text implies still exists in the background (it is expressly disapplied in one narrow intoxication scenario at section 96(5), which only makes sense if it otherwise applies generally). This is a genuine, verified difference from NSW that a reader searching for an obvious risk defence in the ACT should not assume works the same way.

What You Have to Prove

Section 42 sets the objective standard of care: what a reasonable person in the defendant's position would do. Section 43 mirrors NSW's general negligence test closely in substance, though not in section numbering: no negligence unless the risk was foreseeable (known or something the defendant ought to have known), the risk was not insignificant, and a reasonable person would have taken the precaution, weighing probability, seriousness, the burden of precautions, and the social utility of the activity. Section 44 adds that the burden of precautions extends to similar risks the defendant is responsible for, that a safer alternative existing does not itself prove negligence, and that later remedial action is not itself an admission.

Causation sits in sections 45 and 46: factual causation as a necessary condition, plus a scope of liability limb, with the claimant always bearing the onus of proving causation.

Claims Against a Council or Public Authority: The Roads Protection

Chapter 8, "Liability of public and other authorities," sections 108 to 114, applies to tort claims against the Territory, an administrative unit, a territory authority, or a prescribed entity, though it excludes Motor Accident Injuries Act and workers compensation claims. Section 110 asks a court to weigh an authority's actual resources against its full range of activities, not just the claim before it. Section 111 sets a high bar for a breach of statutory duty claim: the act or omission must have been so unreasonable that no authority with the defendant's functions could properly have considered it a reasonable exercise of those functions. Section 112 removes liability for failing to exercise, or consider exercising, a regulatory or licensing function the authority could not have been compelled to exercise through the claimant's own proceedings.

Section 113, "Special nonfeasance protection in relation to roads etc," is the ACT's direct counterpart to NSW's section 45. It covers a broadly defined "road," including a street, lane, cyclepath, footpath or paved public area, and removes liability for harm from a failure to maintain, repair or renew it, unless the authority knew, or ought reasonably to have known, of the particular risk that materialised. That "ought reasonably to have known" language is the key difference from NSW: NSW's section 45 protects a roads authority unless it had actual knowledge, full stop, while the ACT's section 113 extends to constructive knowledge, arguably a lower bar for a claimant to clear than NSW's actual-knowledge-only test. Section 114 confirms that exercising, or deciding to exercise, a function does not itself create a duty to exercise it or to exercise it in a particular way.

Intoxication and Illegal Conduct

Section 94 excludes liability, subject to a narrow exceptional-and-harsh-and-unjust carve-out, where a court is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the injured person was engaged in conduct that is an indictable offence at the time, and that conduct materially contributed to the risk of injury. Both limbs have to be established. Section 95 presumes contributory negligence where the injured person was 16 or older and intoxicated and the defendant pleads it, rebuttable only by proving the intoxication did not contribute to the injury or was not self-induced. Section 96 applies the same presumption structure where an injured person relied on the care or skill of someone else who was intoxicated, such as a passenger relying on an intoxicated driver, and expressly disapplies the common law defence of voluntary assumption of risk in that specific scenario.

What Compensation Covers: No Cap, No Threshold

This is the sharpest contrast with NSW. Chapter 7, "Damages," contains no percentage-of-a-most-extreme-case threshold and no dollar ceiling for non-economic loss in an ordinary public liability or occupiers' claim. Section 99, "Tariffs for damages for non-economic loss," permits, but does not require, a court to be referred to earlier decisions' non-economic loss awards as a guide, and expressly states this "does not change the rules for deciding other damages." A note under section 99 confirms the ACT legislature did write a capped, structured scheme, but only for the separate Motor Accident Injuries Act 2019, which limits non-economic loss recovery to a defined "loss of quality of life" head of damage for motor accidents specifically, leaving the general common law style discretion in place for public liability and occupiers' claims.

One head of damage is capped: section 98 limits loss of earnings to 3 times a formula figure (average weekly earnings, ACT, all males total earnings, from the relevant Australian Bureau of Statistics release), though the live dollar figure that formula produces was not independently confirmed for this page and should be checked against the current ABS release rather than assumed.

The Pre Court Notice You Must Give

Unlike NSW, the ACT does impose a general pre-court notice obligation on a public liability claimant, not just on motor accident claimants. Chapter 5, "Personal injuries claims, pre-court procedures," applies to all personal injury damages claims other than workers compensation claims and certain child injury notices already given under a separate provision. Section 51, "Notice of claim," requires a claimant to give the respondent written notice before suing. For an ordinary public liability claim, the deadline is the earlier of 9 months after the accident (or after symptoms first appear, if the injury was not immediately apparent), or 4 months after the later of first instructing a lawyer about the claim or the respondent being identified.

A late notice needs to state a reasonable excuse for the delay, and the obligation to give notice continues even after the deadline passes. This is a procedural notice regime rather than a hard bar that automatically extinguishes a claim, though a reader should not assume it works exactly like Queensland's separate, stricter Personal Injuries Proceedings Act regime; the two are structured differently even though both impose an early notice obligation.

Contributory Negligence and Time Limits

Contributory negligence can reduce or fully defeat a claim in the ACT, up to 100%, where a court considers that just and equitable, under section 47 (with the detailed mechanics in Part 7.3, sections 101 to 104). This matches NSW's up-to-100% approach in effect, under different section numbers.

For time limits, the Limitation Act 1985, section 16B, "Other claims for damages for personal injury," sets the general period for an ordinary public liability claim at 3 years from the day the injury happened, or, for a disease or disorder, 3 years from the day the person first knew they had the condition and that it was linked to someone's act or omission.

The Insurance Reality

A public liability claim in the ACT is answered, in practice, by the defendant's public liability insurer, though the legal claim itself runs against the occupier, business or authority. Whether the ACT has anything like a nominal defendant or guarantee fund for an uninsured public liability defendant was not independently confirmed for the ACT specifically; a broader search across Australia, covered on our public liability hub, found no such scheme for public liability anywhere, only for CTP motor accident claims, but treat the ACT-specific position as an open question rather than a confirmed negative.

What This Claim Is Not

A public liability claim covers injury outside work and outside a motor vehicle accident. If you were hurt at work, that runs through the ACT's workers compensation scheme instead; see workers compensation in the ACT. If you were hurt in a motor vehicle accident, that runs through the Motor Accident Injuries Act 2019 scheme, which, unlike ordinary public liability, does carry its own capped, structured damages regime; see motor accident compensation in the ACT. If someone died as a result of the incident, see wrongful death claims in the ACT for how a dependant's claim works.

A dispute over common property in an apartment or unit building, short of a personal injury, is covered separately at strata law in Australia, a dispute with a neighbour that has not caused a personal injury is covered at neighbour disputes in Australia, and a dispute with a landlord over the state of a rental property is covered at tenant rights in Australia. For the general rules on how long you have to bring any civil claim in Australia, see statute of limitations in Australia, and to check whether a matter has already been through the courts, see court records in the ACT.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the ACT have a special occupiers' liability law?

Yes. Unlike NSW, occupiers' liability in the ACT is fully codified at section 168 of the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act 2002. It sets a statutory duty an occupier owes to anyone on the premises, and section 168(4) expressly replaces the common law standard of care rules for occupiers.

Is there a cap on public liability compensation in the ACT?

No. This is a verified negative: the ACT has no statutory dollar cap or percentage threshold on non-economic loss damages for an ordinary public liability claim. Section 99 permits a court to be referred to earlier awards only as a non binding guide. A capped scheme does exist, but only for the separate Motor Accident Injuries Act 2019, which covers motor accidents, not general public liability.

Do I have to give notice before I can sue in the ACT?

Yes. Under section 51 of the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act 2002, a claimant must give the respondent written notice of the claim before suing, within the earlier of 9 months after the accident (or after symptoms first appear) or 4 months after first instructing a lawyer about the claim.

Can I claim against the ACT government or a public authority for a footpath injury?

You can bring a claim, but section 113 gives a roads authority a protection: it is not liable for a failure to maintain a road or footpath unless it knew, or ought reasonably to have known, of the particular risk. That constructive knowledge test is broader than NSW's actual knowledge only equivalent.

What if I was intoxicated when I was injured in the ACT?

Sections 94 to 97 address this. If you were intoxicated, contributory negligence is presumed under section 95, rebuttable only by showing the intoxication did not contribute to your injury or was not self-induced. Unlike NSW's fixed 25% minimum reduction, the ACT provisions do not set a specific minimum percentage.

How long do I have to bring a public liability claim in the ACT?

Under the Limitation Act 1985, section 16B, the general period for a personal injury claim is 3 years from the day the injury happened, or, for a disease or disorder, 3 years from when you first knew you had the condition and that it was linked to someone's act or omission.