Introduction

In December 2025, the Licence Appeal Tribunal released a reconsideration decision that boils the rebuttal report question down to a single sentence. The original ruling kept the applicant inside the Minor Injury Guideline and denied six treatment plans, attendant care benefits, an OCF-6, an award, and interest. The applicant asked for reconsideration, arguing in part that the insurer never ran its own neurocognitive assessment, so the treating neuropsychologist's diagnosis should have been accepted.

The reconsideration was dismissed. The reason matters for every clinic that has ever asked, "Why should I prove this if the insurer did not bother to disprove it?" The full strategy is laid out in our rebuttal report playbook, but this decision is worth knowing on its own.

The One-Sentence Rule

Here is the holding, straight from the decision:

> "It is not the respondent's onus to disprove the applicant's claim by way of a rebuttal report."

The applicant argued that because the insurer conducted no assessment of its own for the claimed neurocognitive disorder, the treating neuropsychologist's diagnosis should carry the day. The Tribunal disagreed. The burden of proof sits with the claimant from opening submissions to final order, and the absence of a counter-report from the insurer does not lower that burden by a single step.

For clinics, the practical meaning is blunt: your report has to win on its own strength. An insurer that sits silent and files no rebuttal is not conceding anything, and you cannot point at the silence as proof.

Why the Original Decision Survived

What makes this reconsideration instructive is what the Tribunal did with the factual errors. It agreed with the applicant that the original decision contained two misstatements, one about the treating neuropsychologist relying on an occupational therapist's diagnosis, and one about when the applicant was awake and alert after the accident. The ambulance call report and hospital records showed a GCS score of 15 within ten minutes of the paramedics arriving.

Those errors still did not move the result, because the original adjudicator gave multiple independent reasons for finding the neuropsychologist's opinion unpersuasive. The report was issued more than two years post-accident. The assessor testified as a treating neuropsychologist and was not qualified as an expert. The report did not reconcile how the applicant graduated from a difficult college program and worked multiple jobs. And it appeared to ignore evidence that cut against its own conclusions.

The treating doctor's own records did the applicant no favours either. In one entry, the doctor described the applicant's memory as "intact as manifested by the patient's ability to furnish a complete and lucid medical history."

The testing arguments fared no better. The applicant pointed out that the only invalid test results involved positive impression management, meaning symptom minimization, not exaggeration. But the adjudicator had not relied on that alone. The decision also noted the applicant denied psychological problems during the structured interview, and that the insurer's own assessor had described the "mild depression" as within the normal range, not an impairment, and not diagnosable. A corroborating word from the insurer side is not a win if the words that follow it say no impairment. For more on how testing evidence is weighed, see our guide to validity testing and the SIMS at the LAT.

The Fresh Evidence Trap

The applicant also tried a fresh evidence route, pointing to a concussion clinic referral and an initial consultation report that were created after the production deadline in the case conference order.

The Tribunal rejected it. Both documents existed almost two months before the hearing. The applicant never explained why they could not be produced, never asked at the hearing to admit them, and never flagged that new evidence was coming. The referral itself was made nearly three years after the accident with no explanation for the delay.

The lesson is procedural and unforgiving: a document that exists before the hearing is not fresh evidence, and silence at the hearing about it is treated as a choice.

What to Take From This

1. The insurer does not have to rebut you. You still have to prove every element, report by report. 2. A late report from a treating clinician that does not reconcile the patient's actual functioning will not overcome an adjudicator's multiple independent reasons. 3. "Fresh evidence" means produced the moment it exists, with a request on the record. A two-month-old referral is stale. 4. No overdue benefits meant no interest and no award, which is the same logic the Tribunal has applied across its 2026 section 10 special award decisions.

Conclusion

This decision is a reality check dressed as a reconsideration ruling. The onus never shifts, factual slips in a decision do not erase the independent reasons behind it, and evidence that could have been produced before the hearing is not new evidence.

If your clinic wants to see how all of these rules fit together into a working rebuttal strategy, start with the rebuttal report playbook.