View source for PIC Assessment Conference 2023-06-28

This probably have been second the most painful experience for whole [[Road traffic injury]] saga. It is a shame I do not have time to write about it now, but I will come back to it.

== Hugh Macken ==
I was warned before the tribunal that Macken has bad reputation, but no details given. When the PIC Assessment Conference started, he launched harsh verbal attack on me abusing his power. He appeared as psychopath who suddenly was given power and was using all of it to inflict as much pain as possible drawing out an immense pleasure from it. He declared that his mission is to serve QBE insurance and to protect their interests so that injured people do not claim compensations. I was hoping that this is only acted to demonstrate his power. I was wrong.

== PIC determination by Hugh Macken ==
Hugh Macken uploaded determination on damages to PIC portal on 2023-07-20. It is very unfair and full of factual errors. I asked my solicitor [[Peter James Livers solicitor| Peter Livers]] to submit an application of appeal to district court as he was recommending doing for the last several months. Livers replied that he will not do it and will not allow me to do it. My health deteriorated so hard that I was often ending up in ED and could not exist without emotional support. Pain in my heart intensified so much that it felt as it may stop at any moment now. I was living with the constant feeling that I will not survive, and my head was not working at all. As the last hope, and with the huge help of support workers, I wrote to PIC asking to fix at least obvious errors in the determination of damages. My request was rejected. Since then, I live in terror trying to understand what has happened.

This is one of the rare cases when I am grateful for blockage of the memory. One of the PTSD features that I was so much struggling in the past. Most of the memories of tribunal and determination were blocked in my mind. They were coming back slowly especially at night, but this allowed me to avoid catastrophic (I know that there is a better word in English but cannot find it now) damage on my health and somehow keep functioning at very basic level. The memories and overall understanding what happen is coming back, even if I cannot go to details yet.

=== Award ===
After 8 years and 4 months of the injury impact PIC member Macken [[Media: 2023-07-26 PIC legal cost calculation.pdf| assessed damages]] $410,929.40:
* This is for loss of income - $250,000
* pain & suffering - $150,000
* medical expenses $10,929.40
* legal expenses and disbursements at $41,319.30.

There are many thing wrong in this determination, but the most painful part is that past loss of income is estimated at $100,000. Truthfully, that would be less than one year income for me now if I would not get injured.

The award has many components and it is is for past and future loss. The collision was 8 years and 4 months ago, that is 8.25 of the year. While it affects all the future, but based on the minuscule compensation lets say that only one year was taken into consideration. So, total time would be 9.25 of years. 

$410,929.40 / 9.25 = $44,424.80. That is less than $45k per year. However, this is not accurate as QBE was completely ignoring me before I got legal representation. Unfortunately the representation was very bad and cost a lot.

The awarded legal expenses and disbursements is only a small portion of what disbursements and legal advice and representation cost to me.

My total legal expenses at present moment is $246,478.31.

Total left from compensation '''205,770.39'''. Divided for past time per year and one year for future expenses $22,245.45.

Compare to lost potential income. Average salary for senior Java EE developer is about $150,000 plus super. These is the base that I would have been earning if I did not get injured.

Compare to Disability Support Pension (DSP). DSP for a single person is about $1,355.60 fortnightly. Per year (26 weeks) it would be $35,245.60. This is significantly more compared to what I ended up getting.

Compare to Minimum salary.

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"
|+ Legal expenses
|-
!Firm!!Billed fees!!Disbursements!!Status
|-
|Garry Penhall||$5,444.48||$2,056.48||Paid
|-
|[[Law Partners personal injury firm]]||[[Law Partners personal injury firm#Law Partners bill | $176,327.71]]||$4,958.21||Disputed, held in trust
|-
|[[Moya de Luca-Leonard solicitor | Moya de Luca-Leonard]]||$30,000.00||||Paid, reduced from $77,071.50
|-
|Medical legal disbursements||$2,970 ||Paid
|-
|[[Peter James Livers solicitor | Slattery Thompson - Peter Livers]]||$31,701.07 || ||Disputed, held in trust
|-
|QBE deduction for unspecified documents||$35,05 || ||Paid
|-
|'''Total legal expenses'''||'''$246,478.31'''|| ||
|}

=== Corruption ===
After receiving terrible result I suspected corruption. When I was pushed by my solicitor Livers to accept PIC determination, with his response "I will not allow this" to my request to go to court, I knew Livers is involved. Yet, I was severely affected by this injustice and was hardly functioning. My goal was to survive. However, I finally gathered my thoughts enough and learned more about what I consider corrupt conduct while going thought my case file. So now I am writing a [[Complaint to Independent Commission Against Corruption]] (ICAC).
 
Corruption is the only logical and possible explanation I can come up with of the event related to PIC assessment conference and its determination.

The main events:
# [[Timothy Ceballos | Ceballos]] (QBE solicitor) submitted lots of absurd lies to PIC about my functioning before and after the injury. For example, he stated that after the injury why being in Australia, I worked for several months in Sweden. It is not true. I was in Australia, and of course have not worked in Sweden. I am not able to work since the injury.
# The lies by Ceballos where obvious and I have provided detailed information to Peter Livers about it. I asked to Livers to provide my objections to PIC. However, he has not submitted any objections at first promising to include them in his submission. Livers then for no good reason was very late with submissions. When he finally prepared it there was no mentioning of my objections. He told me that we need to wait for new submissions from Ceballos first, then he will submit objects. After we got new submissions, he insisted that he will present all in detail during tribunal. During tribunal he did not mention any objections, he actually provided basically no information and asked only one question "How many pods with plants I have in my garden?".
# During tribunal Macken many times expressed his support for QBE. In his determination Macken ignored all information provided by me, ignored evidence, took into account lies from Ceballos and added his own.

==== QBE ====
==== Law Partners ====
; 2020 : Ceballos submitted lies to PIC. [[Law Partners personal injury firm | Law Partners]] refused to take my instructions and to forward the evidences disputing incorrect statements by Ceballos.
: file

==== Moya de Luca-Leonard ====
;2021-05-05 : Moya submitted to PIC a replay to Ceballos without including any evidences and objections I provided about incorrect statements by Ceballos. Detail information at the complaint to OLSC: [[2023-11-27 Moya not disputing incorrect information provided by Ceballos]].

==== Peter Livers ====

== Transcript, audio and video of the conference ==
About 6 months after the assessment conference when treatment progressed ([[Trauma #Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing | EMDR]]) enough that I was able to look into what has happened during assessment conference and why such unjust determination I asked for help from [[Legal aid #Redfern Legal Centre | RLC]]. Just one more time reminder how poorly my head works and how important it is to ask for help. So, I was advised that I can ask for transcript of assessment conference.

There were two problems I wanted to address:
# Livers not presenting any information related to my claim, while before he promised to do so during assessment conference.
# Macken significantly misquoted what I told him during assessment conference.

;2024-01-31 : I requested a transcript of the conference.
;2024-02-08 : The PIC sent the transcript. The transcript contained only part of the conference, so I requested an audio file.
;2024-04-29 : The PIC sent an audio file. It was only 16 minutes and 14 seconds of the conference. 
;2024-06-01 : The PIC told me that the audio file was an extract from an original video file. The original video file was supplied by Macken and is the same short. They did not give any explanation why the video file is so short. I requested the video file. The video file could provide more information on what has happened to it. However, the PIC refused access to it.
;2024-06-03 : Mr Sushant from the PIC confirmed that they will not provide me with the video file.
;2024-07-17 : I sent a GIPA application to PIC asking for the video file.
;2024-09-03 : I received same transcript and same audio file, but no video. In following exchange of emails I was refused access to vide file as it is not general PIC practice to provide vide file.

I am preparing application for external review by [[Personal injury claim process#External review by the Information Commissioner | The Information and Privacy Commission NSW]] (IPC). Their fact sheet about external review has the following reasons listed:
; (d) : a decision to provide access or to refuse to provide access to information in response to an access application
; (i) : a decision to provide access to information in a particular way in response to an access application (or a decision not to provide access in the way requested by the applicant).

=== Application to IPC for external review ===
To apply for [[Personal injury claim process#External review by the Information Commissioner | IPC external review]] you need to fill in [https://www.ipc.nsw.gov.au/form-application-external-review-information-commissioner online form].

It has 4 sections and main section 1 has 18 items.