• 27 Apr 2018

DECISION ALERT: Justice delayed but not denied

Rail Corporation New South Wales v Donald; Staff Innovations Pty Ltd t/as Bamford Family Trust [2018] NSWCA 82

In a modern day 'David v Goliath' story, Acorn Lawyers client Alan Donald finally receives justice for a work injury that occurred in May 2008.

Mr Donald was employed by a labour hire company & worked on secondment to RailCorp where he was involved in heavy labouring & jack-hammering work replacing the old wooden sleepers on the 'City Circle' line.

Mr Donald was 'paired' with an older RailCorp employee who refused to do any jack hammering preventing Mr Donald from having regular breaks from the very physically demanding work which ultimately caused a disc protrusion in his lumbar spine which required fusion surgery in April 2010.

RailCorp refused all attempts to settle the claim out of Court & the matter ran in the Supreme Court for twelve days during the 2015 Calendar year with Judgment being reserved on 11 December 2015.

A full twelve months later, in December 2016, Judgment was delivered in Mr Donald's favour.

Then, in March 2017, RailCorp filed an Appeal which was heard over two days in early October 2017.

A full six months later, on 23 April 2018, the Court of Appeal has now delivered a unanimousJudgment dismissing RailCorp's Appeal.

Acorn Lawyers Director, James Govan, said that Mr Donald is very relieved to have finally reached the end of the matter almost exactly 10 years after he suffered the injury.

To read the full judgment, see the following link:https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/5ad83987e4b087b8baa8869a