A Queensland motorist who won his CTP claim ended up on the wrong side of the ledger - ordered to pay the insurer's costs after his damages fell far short of the mandatory final offer he had declined nearly five years earlier.

The Supreme Court of Queensland delivered the costs decision on September 15, 2026. It followed a June 8, 2026 judgment in which the claimant was awarded $8,002.75 in damages for a motor vehicle accident.

That amount triggered Queensland's statutory costs regime for low-value CTP awards.

Under the Motor Accident Insurance Act 1994, when damages come in at or below the prescribed lower offer limit, the court must apply a set of mandatory costs rules - no discretion involved. At the time of the claimant's accident (in the 2017-18 financial year), that lower offer limit was $44,070. His $8,002.75 award was well inside the threshold.

From there, the question was where the damages sat relative to the parties' mandatory final offers - the written offers exchanged at the compulsory conference that Queensland's CTP scheme requires before proceedings can be filed. At the conference in November 2021, the CTP insurer - AAI Limited, trading as Suncorp - offered $20,000. The claimant, who was not legally represented, offered $50,000 plus costs. The claim did not settle. The claimant commenced proceedings in January 2022.

Section 55F(2)(c) of the Act is blunt: where the damages awarded are equal to or less than the insurer's mandatory final offer, costs go to the insurer on the standard basis from the date proceedings started. The provision is mandatory. The court confirmed it confers no discretion - and specifically held that even if the claimant was impecunious (an inference available from his lack of representation and a successful application for a reduction in filing fees), that changed nothing.

There was one contested point. Because the claimant was unrepresented, section 20 of the Motor Accident Insurance Regulation 2018 required the insurer's offer to be accompanied by an explanatory statement approved by the Commissioner - in substance, a notice explaining that accepting the offer would finalise the claim and prevent any further payments. Suncorp did not provide it.

The court held the omission made no difference. The explanatory statement, it found, is directed at ensuring an unrepresented claimant understands the finality of accepting an offer. It says nothing about the costs consequences of rejecting one. Neither the Act nor the Regulation prescribes any consequence for failing to provide the statement, and neither says that non-compliance invalidates the offer. The omission did not prevent the insurer's offer from operating as a valid mandatory final offer for the purposes of the costs regime.

The insurer also sought a set-off of its costs against the $8,002.75 judgment. The court agreed, noting that the insurer's recoverable costs and outlays were likely to exceed the judgment amount and that the claimant was not employed. The practical result: the claimant's damages recovery would be consumed by the costs liability, with a balance likely still owing.

The other defendant - the driver - took no part in the proceedings.

For CTP claims teams, the decision is a clean illustration of how section 55F's mandatory costs regime operates once the numbers line up, with no room for hardship-based exceptions - and confirms that omitting the explanatory statement for an unrepresented claimant will not invalidate a mandatory final offer for costs purposes.