Rejecting an Injuries Board assessment and going to court

The Board's Notice of Assessment gives you 28 days to accept in writing. If you say no, or say nothing, the assessment lapses and the Board issues an Authorisation. This guide is about what comes after that: the court, the costs rule in section 51A of the 2003 Act, and the questions that only become live once a judge rather than the Board is deciding.

The chapter 2 guide on accepting or rejecting within 28 days covers the 28 days themselves. Start there if the letter has just arrived.

What a rejection changes

The Board assesses on paper, with regard to the Personal Injuries Guidelines, and on one assumption: that the respondent is fully liable for the injury (section 20 of the 2003 Act as amended). It does not decide who was at fault and it does not hear evidence. A court does both.

So rejecting an assessment is not asking a second body to look again at the same figure. It moves the claim into a process where liability, contributory negligence, credibility and the medical evidence are all open, and where the respondent's insurer will usually test each of them.

Three things follow:

• An Authorisation issues under the 2003 Act, which is the document that lets you issue proceedings.
• The limitation clock, which has been paused since your application was received, starts to run again six months after the Authorisation issues (section 50). The guide on how a Board application pauses the clock has worked dates.
• Section 51A applies to costs if the respondent accepted the assessment you rejected.

The Authorisation

An Authorisation is a short document from the Board stating that the claim may proceed to court against the respondents it names. It records neither the assessed figure nor the reason the assessment was rejected. The figure matters later, under section 51A, because the respondent and its insurer keep their copy of the Notice of Assessment.

Proceedings must issue within the time the Statute of Limitations allows: two years from the accident or the later date of knowledge, with the Board period disregarded and six months added after the Authorisation. The time-limit checker works the date out. A solicitor will usually issue well inside it.

Section 51A in plain words

Section 51A was inserted by the Personal Injuries Resolution Board Act 2022 and applies to assessments rejected from 13 February 2023. It bites in one situation: you rejected the assessment, the respondent accepted it (or was deemed to have accepted it by saying nothing within its 21 days), and the court then awards you no more than the Board assessed.

Two details soften the rule. The court can disapply the deemed tender where there is special cause, and a later formal offer under section 17 of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004, or an actual lodgment in court, takes its place.

The sum at risk is not the award. It is the respondent's legal costs from its acceptance date to the end of the case, plus your own costs, which in that situation nobody else pays. In a defended action that can run to a figure of the same order as the assessment itself. The guide on what a case costs and who pays goes through the mechanics.

Liability is open again

At the Board, the respondent's consent to an assessment was not an admission (section 16). In court the respondent does not have to accept that the accident was its fault. The usual lines of defence are:

• Denial of liability. The defence says the accident did not happen as described, or that there was no breach of duty.
• Contributory negligence. The defence says you contributed to the injury: a seat belt not worn, a warning sign ignored, a safety procedure not followed. Under the Civil Liability Act 1961 the court reduces damages by the share of fault it finds against you. An assessment of €20,000 followed by a court award of €20,000 reduced by 25% for contributory negligence is an award of €15,000, which is below the assessment and brings section 51A into play.
• Causation and the medical evidence. The defence may obtain its own medical report and may argue that part of the injury, or part of the recovery time, is not attributable to the accident.
• Credibility. A personal injuries action is verified by a sworn affidavit under section 14 of the 2004 Act, and under section 26 the court must dismiss an action where the claimant knowingly gave false or misleading evidence, unless that would cause injustice.

Each of these was invisible at the Board stage. None of them is a reason to accept or to reject. They are the questions a court decides and the Board does not.

Time and cost: what the Central Bank records

The Central Bank's National Claims Information Database (NCID, explained in the glossary) records motor injury claims by the channel they settled through. For claims settled in the first half of 2025 the average litigated claim cost €66,100, of which €26,752 was legal costs, and took 4.7 years. The average claim settled through the Board cost €22,658. In 2024, 36% of motor injury claims settled through litigation, taking 5 years on average, against 16% through the Board in 2.7 years.

These are averages across different claims, not a forecast for yours. Litigated claims include the larger and more contested ones, which is part of why they cost more and take longer. The figures page carries the numbers with their dates, and the guide on the Central Bank's channel figures explains what they do and do not show.

Many litigated claims settle before a hearing. A settlement after an Authorisation can take account of section 51A, and both sides' solicitors will have it in mind.

What a solicitor weighs

A solicitor looking at a rejected assessment, or at one you are thinking of rejecting, would ask:

• Is the Board's figure inside the Guidelines' bracket for an injury described like this, and where in that bracket does it sit? A court must have regard to the same Guidelines and must state its reasons if it departs from them. The injury checker shows the brackets.
• Has the injury reached medical finality? If the prognosis is still open, the Board may have assessed too early, and that is a different question from whether its figure was low.
• Are there special damages the Board did not have vouched: lost earnings, treatment, travel, care? The special damages guide lists what counts.
• What is the liability picture, including contributory negligence, and what evidence supports it?
• Did the respondent accept the assessment, and if so on what date, because that is the date the deemed tender runs from?
• Which court the claim belongs in, and what that means for costs and for the wait. The guide on the District, Circuit and High Courts sets out the limits.

A solicitor cannot charge a percentage of damages (section 149 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015) and must give you a written notice of costs under section 150 of the same Act. The chapter 5 guide on solicitor fees and section 149 explains both, and the guide on claiming without a solicitor explains what the fee is for.

Where this leaves you

Rejecting an assessment opens the claim to a court's decision on liability, on contributory negligence and on the figure, and it starts a costs clock under section 51A from the day the respondent accepted. The accept-or-reject explainer sets the Board's figure, the Guidelines' bracket and the section 51A exposure side by side with dates. A rejected assessment is a point where a solicitor is plainly the right step.