{"id":167558,"date":"2025-09-25T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/167558\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T07:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T07:00:08","slug":"south-australia-passes-laws-to-protect-victims-of-personal-injury-from-claim-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/167558\/","title":{"rendered":"South Australia passes laws to protect victims of personal injury from ‘claim farmers’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Individuals who contact a survivor of abuse or personal injury without their permission to encourage them to make a claim for compensation could face fines of up to $50,000 under new laws which have passed in South Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The reforms, which passed last week, will ban the practice known as “claim farming”, which is when an individual or business makes unsolicited contact with a victim who may have grounds for a civil injury claim in order to obtain their personal information and receive a benefit for referring them to a law firm to pursue compensation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It follows recent calls for a nationwide ban on the practice,<\/a> after many survivors of child sexual abuse told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that they had experienced being cold called by law firms.<\/p>\n

The practice has already been banned in Queensland<\/a> and New South Wales.<\/p>\n

Calls for nationwide claim farming ban<\/a><\/p>\n

The “unscrupulous” practice involves contacting a survivor of abuse or personal injury without their permission to encourage them to make a claim for compensation.<\/p>\n

The South Australian legislation prohibits anyone from making unsolicited contact with another person to solicit or induce them to make a personal injury claim, with the expectation that they would receive a benefit in exchange.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The change has made it illegal to give or receive a benefit in exchange for the personal details of someone who has, or may have, a personal injury claim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under the laws, anyone who engages in the practice could be fined up to $50,000, with lawyers also facing disciplinary action through the Legal Practitioners Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Gutter behaviour’<\/p>\n

SA’s Attorney-General Kyam Maher described claim farming as an “immoral” practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Targeting vulnerable people who have been injured, including victims of abuse, at a point in their life where they desperately need help and support simply to try and make a quick buck \u2013 is gutter behaviour,” Mr Maher said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Attorney-General Kyam Maher says the reforms will prevent “predatory operators” profiting from victims. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n

“Whilst all persons with an injury are vulnerable to some degree, claim farmers often target people with vulnerabilities additional to the injury.<\/p>\n

“People who have suffered an injury, through no fault of their own, deserve better and these laws will help prevent predatory operators who seek to profit from their misfortune.”<\/p>\n

The state government said the reforms would still allow individuals to contact a victim, at their request, for a class action or altruistic approaches, without any expectation or intention to receive a benefit as a result.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It also said outlawing claim farming would not prevent victims from bringing a claim for compensation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bipartisan support for change<\/p>\n

The reforms had bipartisan support, with Shadow Attorney-General Josh Teague describing claim farming as a “wholly undesirable activity that has been … happening, as I understand it, particularly interstate and particularly in the eastern states”.<\/p>\n

The Malinauskas government first brought the reforms to parliament in September 2024 but did not press them through parliament until last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Teague said the delay indicated that there had “been no emergent fresh crisis” of claim farming activity in South Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Individuals who contact a survivor of abuse or personal injury without their permission to encourage them to make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,13884,99,10355,109893,1783,109894,25494,13408,109895,37487],"class_list":["post-167558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bill","tag-business","tag-child-sexual-abuse","tag-claim-farming","tag-compensation","tag-kyam-maher","tag-laws","tag-sa-government","tag-state-parliament","tag-victim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}