Update: What do you know! Here’s another one, hot off the press of the Supreme Court of Queensland: Charleville RSL Memorial Club Inc v Sheapalm Pty Ltd [2009] QSC 193.
Original post: What insurers do when they get a public liability claim is hire a loss assessor to find out the facts, hopefully get to the witnesses before anyone else does, and put the insured under surveillance before they get lawyers to warn them of the tricks of insurers’ lawyers. It is a rare form of institutionalised use of non-lawyers where that is sensible, insurers being in some ways the most sophisticated purchasers of legal services (which is why the insurance wings of large firms, less profitable by virtue of clever bargaining by insurers, split off and become boutique insurance law firms). So a hoary old chestnut is whether the report generated by the loss adjuster’s retainer is covered by legal professional privilege, and whether it makes any (and if so what) difference if the insurer uses a stooge solicitor to effect the retainer. Long the leading case on legal professional privilege, Grant v. Downs [1976] HCA 63; (1976) 135 CLR 674 was in fact more or less such a case.
Harden Shire Council v Curtis [2009] NSWCA 179 is worth tucking away for several reasons. First, it is obviously a case of unusually high authority on this particular question. Second, none of the loss assessor reports authorities are considered, so this decision will not turn up in regular research which takes as its starting point earlier authorities on point. Third, it was decided under the Evidence Act, 1995 (NSW) an analogue of the soon to commence Evidence Act, 2008 (Vic) which we Victorians are going to have to get used to. Fourth, it’s short, and so capable of being handed up usefully as clear authority for a number of propositions, including that: Continue reading “Latest on privilege of loss assessors’ reports”