NRMA Insurance has lost a Supreme Court bid to overturn a review panel decision that more than doubled a claimant's permanent impairment rating.
The insurer filed its summons on September 4, 2025, challenging a June 2025 decision by a Review Panel of the Personal Injury Commission that assessed claimant Naomi Kwarteng's whole person impairment at 12% - up from the 5% originally certified by Medical Assessor Woo following a motor vehicle accident in April 2021.
The gap matters. Under the Motor Accident Injuries Act 2017, no damages for non-economic loss can be awarded unless a claimant's permanent impairment exceeds 10%. At 5%, NRMA faced no exposure to non-economic loss damages. At 12%, the door opened.
The case turned on sharply divided medical evidence. Medical Assessor Woo, who examined Kwarteng in July 2024, found "exaggeration of symptoms" and "abnormal illness behaviour," assessing her right shoulder at 5% using a joint swelling methodology. He described her as "a poor historian." A separate report by Dr Stephen Rimmer went further, stating that Kwarteng's "history and examination bordered on the absurd."
But when the Review Panel's own medical assessors re-examined Kwarteng in April 2025, they reached the opposite conclusion. Using a goniometer to measure active range of movement, they found her right shoulder effort to be genuine and assessed 12% whole person impairment. They recorded no inconsistency, no abnormal illness behaviour, and no exaggeration.
The Panel also raised pointed questions about Dr Rimmer's findings, saying it was "surprised by the trenchant comments" and questioning whether "cross-cultural factors may have caused some misunderstandings." It noted the interpreter assisting Dr Rimmer was male and that there was no indication a female chaperone or the claimant's husband was present during the examination and interview.
NRMA challenged the decision on three grounds: that the Panel failed to exercise collective judgment by delegating the assessment to its two medical assessors without involving the legal member; that it failed to adequately expose its reasoning; and that it failed to address NRMA's argument that no right shoulder pathology appeared until almost two years after the accident.
Griffiths AJ rejected all three grounds, dismissing the summons with costs on March 24, 2026. The Court found the Panel had read all the documentation, drawn a clear distinction between its medical assessors' findings and its own collective view, and held a post-examination teleconference involving all three members. On causation, the Court pointed to medical records from mid-2021 - only a couple of months after the accident - documenting Kwarteng's shoulder complaints.
The Court also dismissed NRMA's argument that a finding of sub-maximal effort in the cervical spine contradicted the broader finding of no exaggeration, accepting that co-contraction is an organic finding distinct from abnormal illness behaviour.
For insurers, the decision is a sharp reminder of how narrow the window for judicial review of panel decisions remains — and how credibility findings at first instance can be entirely undone on review.
Insurance Australia Limited t/as NRMA Insurance v Kwarteng [2026] NSWSC 225, Supreme Court of New South Wales. Decided 24 March 2026.
