The Supreme Court of Victoria has deemed an employer failed to act on its knowledge of the immediate risk posed to a worker. The woman was attacked on her way to work, most likely by the partner of a "high-risk" client.

The employee was promoted by her company, Nexus Primary Health in 2010, from receptionist to family outreach worker and put on a 12-month plan encompassing training, monitoring, and mentoring.

Her job required her to assist victims of domestic abuse, which entailed visiting them at home and appearing in court.

One such client, who the worker started assisting in 2010, was labelled as "high risk" owing to the woman's husband's threats and significant attacks.

The employee was then attacked from behind on the morning of March 27, 2013, when she got out of her car outside her doctor's office in Broadford on her way to work. 

According to the employee, the incident "destroyed" her life. She claimed that she had post-traumatic stress disorder, for which she has received a diagnosis, and was unable to work.

Following the incident in March 2013, the employee had a string of threatening and anonymous occurrences, including an "ominous" and threatening letter being mailed to her home, a "Christmas box" being placed on her doorstep and a brick being hurled through her front window.

She argued that the client's spouse was most likely the attacker and that Nexus was negligently responsible for her injury because it had neglected to withdraw her from the case while being aware of the threats the husband had made before the assault.

Nexus contended there was no evidence the assailant was this man and further argued it did not owe the worker a duty to control risks posed by the criminal offending of an unknown person.

Justice Stephen O'Meara found that Nexus had failed to follow its own procedures and reassign the high-risk case to another employee while knowing the worker had received repeated threats from the accused attacker.

On the basis of the evidence, Justice O'Meara dismissed the claim and concluded that the attacker was the high-risk client's spouse because he was the only one with a history of threatening the employee.

There was also a correlation between the threatening events experienced by the worker and the dates she helped the relevant client at hearings.

“The general risk to the safety of family violence outreach workers, including the [employee], was beyond merely foreseeable in the sense discussed in the authorities concerning reasonable foreseeability, it was present, palpable, and quite real. It was also plainly known to the defendant.” Judge O'Meara said.    

The court held that the nature and extent of that risk was or should have been known to Nexus.

Nexus had partially responded to the risk by, for example, taking some security measures at its premises, implementing policies and procedures, training staff, and providing the workers with mobile phones.

However, the court found Nexus did not have any weekly formal supervision meetings and it did not have such supervision in the period of more than two years prior to 27 March 2013.

“In the circumstances, in my view, [Nexus} breached the duty of care which it owed to the [employee] by failing to enforce the system of work which it designed but did not properly enforce,” Justice O’Meara said.

The court ruled Nexus liable for the worker's injury, loss and damage, and found she was entitled to $1,244,616 in damages.

Read the judgment

Bell v Nexus Primary Health [2022] VSC 605 (13 October 2022)