Background
The plaintiff, Jimmy Martin Evans, allegedly sustained injury through the course of his employment with the defendant, Suncoast Fencing. During the pre-court proceedings prescribed by the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (QLD) (‘the Act’), the plaintiff described this injury as arising on a single day, 26 November 2020.
Throughout pre-court proceedings, the plaintiff consistently identified the 26 November 2020 as the date on which his symptoms arose. On 11 November 2021, WorkCover Queensland, the statutory workers’ compensation insurer, issued a notice of assessment, which identified the assessed injury as bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome, and the date of injury as 26 November 2020.
On 24 May 2022, the plaintiff delivered a notice of claim for damages. Again, the date of 26 November 2020 was recorded next to questions calling for both the ‘Date of injury (for limitation period purposes)’ and the ‘Date and time of event’.
The plaintiff commenced a claim against the defendant for common law damages. In his statement of claim, the plaintiff alleged that the injury arose either on 26 November 2020, over a period of time leading up to that date, or a combination of both. Thereafter, the defendant brought an application, seeking to strike out these parts of the statement of claim.
The parties agreed that the plaintiff could not pursue a claim for damages unless he had complied with s 237 of the Act, meaning that he had received a notice of assessment for ‘the injury’ for which his claim for damages was predicated upon. It was the defendant’s position that the plaintiff was prevented from pursuing any aspect of his claim said to have arisen as a result of events over a period of time by operation of s 237 of the Act.
Evans v Suncoast Fencing: Case Background and Key Facts
The application was dismissed.
The court identified the definition of “injury” and “event” within the Act. Cash DCJ drew analogy with Anderson v Aged Care Employers Self Insurance [2011] QSC 101, opining that the present application demonstrated a similar “confusion between the concepts of injury and event as defined by the Act”. Cash DCJ quoted Dalton J in Anderson, who stated that “[a]n injury is not the means by which damage is inflicted, but is the effect on the person of the worker of an event”.
Cash DCJ opined that the allegedly offending paragraph of the statement of claim merely addressed the means by which the damage was caused and did not plead a different injury to the one identified in the notice of assessment. The court noted that the injury had been consistently described over time, but that the description of the event or events leading to that injury had expanded over time. Cash DCJ further opined that whether the injury was suffered purely as a result of an event occurring on 26 November 2020, or was otherwise suffered both over a period of time and on 26 November 2020, was a matter for determination at trial.
The court concluded that the defendant had not demonstrated that the injury identified in the allegedly offending paragraph of the statement of claim was not distinct from that injury identified in the notice of assessment and, as such, it would not be appropriate to strike out the paragraph on account of the operation of s 237 of the Act.
Cash DCJ separately heard the parties as to costs.
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