By Gaby Grammeno Contributor
When a staff member working from home was bitten by a dog, her employer rejected liability for compensation. Was her lacerated hand a work injury? Here’s what the NSW Personal Injury Commission had to say about it.
The woman was employed as a case worker for a NSW Local Health District in a court diversion program. Her job involved counselling people before they were sentenced. She was immunocompromised, so during the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked from home due to the stay-at-home orders issued by the NSW government between July and October 2021.
While working from home on the morning of 8 October 2021, she attempted to intervene in a dog attack on her daughter’s puppy outside her front door. She was bitten on her right hand, which was severely lacerated, and was treated at Orange Hospital.
Following the incident, she stopped working and sought treatment from various medical providers, not only for her hand but also for post-traumatic stress disorder.
She applied for workers compensation soon after the attack, but her employer disputed liability on the basis the injury did not arise out of, or in the course of, employment and that her employment was not a substantial contributing factor to the injury.
The employer asserted that intervening in a dog attack did not form part of her duties, nor was it incidental to them, and her employer had not directed or expected her to intervene.
She argued she would not have been home at the time of the incident if not for work, and, as a result of her duties, she had to keep her daughter’s puppy outside in order to maintain a quiet environment, as her job required her to be constantly on the phone or taking video calls.
The insurer maintained that her employment was interrupted when she responded to the dog attack, and there was no causal connection with her employment.
The woman applied to the Personal Injury Commission to resolve the dispute.
In the Personal Injury Commission
She submitted that she had just finished a phone call when she heard the puppy in distress, went to the front door, and saw the puppy being attacked by another dog. She intervened, and the other dog – a cattle dog – latched onto her right hand and would not let go, causing severe lacerations and a psychological injury.
PIC Member Rachel Homan awarded her compensation for weekly payments and medical expenses, finding that the physical and psychological injuries sustained arose in the course of employment, and employment was a substantial contributing factor to her injuries.
Her employer appealed against this finding, claiming that the Member made the wrong call.
The appeal
The woman said that since the injury she’d experienced pain in her right hand and psychological symptoms, including anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, flashbacks of the attack, and night sweats. She’d become reliant on pain medication and was taking antidepressants. As a result of these injuries and psychological trauma, she had difficulty returning to work as her duties involved counselling difficult clients with traumatic backgrounds.
A psychiatrist had expressed the opinion that she’d sustained post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the incident.
Her employer argued that the Member had erred in concluding the injury had been sustained ‘in the course of employment’, failed to make a comparative assessment of competing factors, failed to consider whether the connection to employment was ‘of substance’ or to take other relevant matters into account.
After considering the evidence, PIC President Judge Gerard Phillips dismissed all four grounds of appeal. He found that Member Holman had not erred in her findings.
The caseworker had to work from home and the puppy had to be put outside to avoid disturbance because of the nature of her work. The probability of the injury was ‘substantially or materially increased’ by the unsupervised presence of the puppy tied up in front of the home, which made it susceptible to attack. This was the basis of the Member’s finding that the case worker’s employment was a substantial contributing factor to her injury.
Judge Phillips found no error in the Member’s reasoning, and that she had assessed the various work and non-work-related factors in undertaking the evaluative exercise required of her by the legislation.
What it means for employers
Injuries sustained by employees while working from home may be found to be work-related, even if a causal connection is not immediately apparent.
Read the decision
Gaby Grammeno Contributor
Gaby has extensive experience as a researcher, writer, editor and project manager on a wide variety of information products, including books, guides, reports and submissions.
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