Intentional Conduct and the Operation of the Civil Liability Acts: Unanswered Questions

Abstract

The Civil Liability Acts place significant limitations and caps on the damages that are recoverable for claims caught by those Acts or relevant parts thereof. Such limitations and preclusions significantly impact on what were plaintiffs’ existing common law rights prior to the passage of the CLAs. Importantly, however, many of those limitations do not apply to certain classes of claims excluded from the operation of the CLAs. The focus of this article is on some widely (but not uniformly) adopted exclusions to the operation of the CLAs, namely that many parts of the CLAs do not apply to claims arising from types of intentional conduct. Many of these limitations are express; but other limitations raise issues of intention that are less patent. The precise reach of the ‘intentional conduct’ exclusions in the CLAs has not been resolved and many important questions remain unanswered. This is despite the increasing number of cases coming before the courts in which plaintiffs are attempting to circumvent the operation of the CLAs. The issues will continue to attract judicial attention. This article considers the different interpretation and operation of the ‘intentional conduct’ exclusions in the CLAs and seeks to answer some of unanswered questions.