Workplace Psychological Injury and Dual Weekly Payments: When Can a Council’s Proposed Transfer Defeat Compensation, and How Does the Personal Injury Commission Prevent Double Recovery Under the Workers Compensation Act 1987?

Based on the authentic Australian judicial case Dous v Blacktown City Council [2025] NSWPIC 24, this article disassembles the Court’s judgment process regarding evidence and law. It transforms complex judicial reasoning into clear, understandable key point analyses, helping readers identify the core of the dispute, understand the judgment logic, make more rational litigation choices, and providing case resources for practical research to readers of all backgrounds.

Chapter 1: Case Overview and Core Disputes

Basic Information

Court of Hearing: Personal Injury Commission of New South Wales
Presiding Member: Member (Michael Moore)
Cause of Action: Workers compensation dispute concerning an alleged primary psychological injury and entitlements to weekly payments and treatment expenses
Judgment Date: 9 January 2025
Core Keywords:
Keyword 1: Authentic Judgment Case
Keyword 2: Primary psychological injury
Keyword 3: Disease injury
Keyword 4: Reasonable action defence
Keyword 5: No current work capacity
Keyword 6: Dual benefits reduction

Background

The Applicant had been a long-serving cook in a council-operated childcare centre. A confrontation with a parent in the workplace was followed by weeks of internal handling: discussions about apologies, proposals for mediation, and management communications about transferring the Applicant to another centre. The Applicant alleged that this chain of events steadily damaged her mental health, leading to complete incapacity for work. The Respondent denied that any compensable injury occurred, disputed the employment connection, relied on the statutory defence for reasonable action with respect to transfer, challenged incapacity, and resisted liability for treatment expenses. A further complication emerged: the Applicant was already being paid maximum weekly compensation for a separate accepted physical injury from the same incapacity date, raising the statutory question of how to avoid double recovery for the same incapacity.

Core Disputes and Claims

What the Commission was required to determine can be grouped into three core disputes:

1. Injury and causation (threshold dispute)
   • Whether the Applicant suffered a primary psychological injury that met the statutory definition of “injury”, specifically a disease injury.
   • Whether employment was the main contributing factor to contracting that disease injury.
2. Statutory defence (transfer reasonableness dispute)
   • If a psychological injury existed, whether it was wholly or predominantly caused by the Respondent’s reasonable action taken or proposed to be taken with respect to transfer, such that compensation was barred.
3. Entitlements (payments, capacity, and overlap dispute)
   • Whether the Applicant had “no current work capacity” and for what period.
   • Whether weekly compensation was payable, and if so whether it had to be reduced to prevent “dual benefits” because the Applicant was already receiving weekly payments for a separate physical injury during the same period of incapacity.
   • Whether the Respondent must pay medical and related expenses for the psychological injury.

Relief sought (in procedural terms):
– Applicant: weekly compensation on the no-current-work-capacity basis, and payment of reasonably necessary treatment expenses.
– Respondent: dismissal of the claim (no injury, inadequate causation, reasonable action defence, no incapacity, and no s 60 expenses), and in the alternative reduction to prevent double payment.

Chapter 2: Origin of the Case

The Applicant’s working life at the centre had the kind of rhythm familiar to many essential workers: early starts, repetitive manual tasks, and responsibility for feeding children and staff. Years of service built a sense of identity: this workplace was not simply where wages were earned, but where competence, routine, and pride lived.

The conflict did not begin as a “workers compensation issue”. It began as an ordinary moment in a childcare environment: a disagreement between children over a bike in the yard. The Applicant intervened in a calm and practical way, attempting to de-escalate. Almost immediately, the situation escalated through an adult’s anger. A parent loudly abused a staff member, and when the Applicant returned to explain what happened, the parent’s abuse expanded to include the Applicant as well.

From there, the dispute moved from the yard to the machinery of workplace management. The central deterioration was not one explosive incident alone, but the lived reality that followed: repeated discussions about how to respond to the parent, pressure around an apology, the looming possibility of “a meeting” with the parent, and management’s internal posture toward “solving” the conflict by moving the worker rather than controlling the external risk.

The decisive moments, as reconstructed from evidence and accepted findings, were these:

• The workplace event that triggered fear and distress: the Applicant being subjected to aggressive verbal abuse by a parent at work.
• The organisational response pathway: management processes that sought to arrange a mediated meeting and effectively required an apology, despite the Applicant and another staff member viewing themselves as victims of the abuse.
• The transfer mechanism becoming a threat: the Applicant being told, in substance, that refusal to attend the meeting would lead to transfer, and later being told a decision had been made to transfer her with immediate effect.
• The psychological breaking point: the last day of work, medical attendance, and certification as unfit, with no return to work thereafter.

This is the factual architecture that turned a workplace interpersonal incident into a statutory dispute about disease injury, reasonableness, and dual payment regulation.

Chapter 3: Key Evidence and Core Disputes

Applicant’s Main Evidence and Arguments

1. The Applicant’s narrative evidence (statement material)
   • A detailed account of the parent’s verbal abuse in the workplace, described as frightening and distressing.
   • A description of subsequent management conduct: pressure to attend a meeting with the parent, pressure to apologise, threats or leverage of transfer if the Applicant did not comply, and the shock of being told transfer was decided and immediate.
   • A description of functional collapse: inability to continue work, severe anxiety and depressive symptoms, and ongoing incapacity.
2. Employer file notes and internal records relied on by the Applicant
   • Contemporaneous notes indicating the Applicant was observed crying, distressed, and “deeply affected” shortly after the incident.
   • Records suggesting the parent had a pattern of disruptive or unreasonable interactions with the centre, supporting the Applicant’s case that the workplace environment and response were significant stressors.
3. Medical evidence supporting diagnosis, causation, and capacity
   • Psychiatric evidence diagnosing major depressive disorder with anxiety or anxious distress, linking it to a chain of work events rather than to a non-work cause.
   • Treating specialist evidence describing significant impairment of daily functioning and no work capacity.
   • Certificates of capacity consistently recording no current work capacity.
4. Legal argument framing
   • The Applicant advanced the claim as a disease injury, requiring proof that employment was the main contributing factor.
   • The Applicant resisted the reasonable action defence by arguing the injury was caused by a chain of events and, in any event, the transfer-related conduct was not objectively reasonable.

Respondent’s Main Evidence and Arguments

1. Liability denial notices and pleaded issues
   • Denial of injury within the statutory meaning.
   • Dispute that employment causation met the relevant thresholds.
   • Reliance on reasonable action with respect to transfer to bar compensation for psychological injury.
   • Dispute as to incapacity and entitlements, including treatment expenses.
2. Independent medical evidence relied upon by the Respondent
   • A medical opinion asserting, in substance, that the Applicant’s symptom reporting was implausible and that the diagnostic picture was not accepted on psychiatric grounds.
3. Dual benefits argument
   • The Respondent argued that the Applicant was already receiving maximum weekly compensation for a separate accepted physical injury and could not receive “dual benefits” resulting in payment beyond statutory maxima.

Core Dispute Points

1. Did a compensable primary psychological injury occur, and is it properly characterised as a disease injury?
2. Was employment the main contributing factor to the contraction of that disease?
3. Was the injury wholly or predominantly caused by reasonable action with respect to transfer, such that compensation was barred?
4. Did the Applicant have no current work capacity because of the psychological injury, and for what period?
5. If weekly payments were awarded for the psychological injury, how should the Commission deal with overlap where the worker was already being paid for a physical injury with the same incapacity date?

Chapter 4: Statements in Affidavits

Although the Personal Injury Commission process often relies on written statements and compiled documentary material rather than a strict court-style affidavit contest, the practical function is the same: each side builds a narrative scaffold that the Commission must test against contemporaneous documents and medical reasoning.

How each side used sworn or statement evidence to persuade

Applicant strategy:
– The Applicant’s statement material operated as a timeline with emotional specificity: what was said, what was proposed, when meetings occurred or were sprung without warning, and how transfer was conveyed.
– The Applicant’s account also did evidentiary work beyond emotion: it anchored the medical causation opinions by providing a coherent set of “workplace stressors” that psychiatrists could assess as triggers for a depressive and anxiety disorder.

Respondent strategy:
– The Respondent’s approach attempted to relocate causation away from workplace wrongdoing and toward a “reasonable management action” narrative: transfer as an administrative response to conflict.
– The Respondent sought to leverage a medical opinion that attacked the credibility of symptom reporting, aiming to collapse the injury at the diagnostic level rather than fight each factual step of the chain.

Comparative framing of the same fact: “meeting” and “transfer”

One of the most instructive contrasts is how the same management events can be linguistically coded:

• From the Applicant’s side, the meeting was framed as a feared confrontation with a person who had already abused staff, with pressure to apologise and an implicit threat of transfer if the Applicant did not comply.
• From the Respondent’s side, the same events were framed as workplace conflict resolution and a proposed transfer, argued to be reasonable action.

The Commission’s reasoning shows why this framing contest matters: s 11A is not triggered merely because an employer labels something “reasonable” or “a transfer”. The defence requires proof of both dominant causation and objective reasonableness, assessed against evidence and the reality of what the worker experienced and what the employer knew.

Strategic intent behind procedural directions regarding statements

The Commission’s directions about admitting late documents, and the scrutiny of what evidence could properly be relied upon, served a familiar litigation purpose: it prevented one party from ambushing the other with new narrative evidence shortly before hearing, especially where it contained hearsay or added little probative value. This kind of gatekeeping is not technical fussiness; it is procedural fairness in action, ensuring the determination rests on material that can properly be tested.

Chapter 5: Court Orders

Before the final determination, the Commission’s procedural handling included steps typical of a workers compensation dispute involving psychological injury:

• Listing the matter for a conciliation and arbitration hearing after a preliminary conference did not resolve it.
• Granting leave for directions for production to treating practitioners, reflecting that the medical records and treatment trajectory were central to causation and capacity.
• Admitting late or additional documents where relevant and unopposed, but refusing a late statement where it was largely duplicative, hearsay-heavy, and inadequately explained in terms of delay.

These orders and directions set the stage for the final hearing being a contest of: (1) credibility, (2) medical reasoning quality, and (3) statutory thresholds.

Chapter 6: Hearing Scene: Ultimate Showdown of Evidence and Logic

Process Reconstruction: Live Restoration

The hearing dynamic in a psychological injury matter often turns on a tension the Commission must resolve: distress can be real, but the law requires more than distress. It requires a legally recognised injury, proper causal connection to employment, and a coherent medical explanation.

In this case, the Applicant’s evidence and the Respondent’s documentary material were not in the classic shape of a sharp factual contradiction. There were no strong competing eyewitness statements from the Respondent that contradicted the Applicant’s account of events. Instead, the battlefront moved to medical logic and the reasonableness defence.

The Commission’s method followed a disciplined sequence:

1. Determine whether the Applicant’s factual account is credible and consistent with contemporaneous documents.
2. Assess competing medical opinions by testing whether each doctor worked from an accurate history and applied defensible psychiatric reasoning.
3. If injury is established, apply statutory thresholds in the correct order: disease injury and main contributing factor, then consider whether s 11A is made out, then capacity and entitlements, then the dual benefits discretion.

Core Evidence Confrontation: The decisive clash

The decisive confrontation was not a dramatic “gotcha” moment. It was the Commission’s identification of an internal flaw in the Respondent’s cornerstone medical opinion: the opinion relied on a mischaracterised sleep history, and then used that mischaracterisation to reject diagnosis altogether.

This is the kind of evidentiary collapse that matters because in psychological injury litigation, medical evidence is often the bridge between events and statutory injury. If the bridge is built on an incorrect factual foundation, the bridge cannot carry legal weight.

Judicial Reasoning with Judicial Original Quotation Principle

Context: The Commission had to decide which medical reasoning was reliable. It also had to decide whether it could accept an expert opinion that rejected diagnosis by asserting the worker’s symptoms were “incompatible with survival”, when the doctor’s own recorded history did not support that extreme assertion.

“The mis-characterisation of the applicant’s history is … outrageous conduct.”

Why this statement was determinative:
The Commission treated factual accuracy as the entry ticket for expert opinion. Once the Commission found that the Respondent’s medical opinion was driven by a doctor-created distortion of the history, the opinion’s probative value collapsed. That finding then allowed the Commission to prefer the consistent psychiatric evidence supporting diagnosis and work-related causation.

A second determinative pivot was the Commission’s approach to the “fair climate” principle in evaluating expert opinion:

“There is clearly no ‘fair climate’ … the facts … bear no relationship to the established facts.”

Why this statement was determinative:
The Commission anchored expert admissibility and weight to congruence with established facts. Where an opinion is built on “facts” that are not facts, the reasoning is not just weak; it becomes unsafe to rely upon. This was the evidentiary logic that drove the legal conclusion on injury and causation.

Chapter 7: Final Judgment of the Court

The Commission determined and ordered, in substance, as follows:

1. The Applicant suffered a primary psychological injury as a result of workplace events over the relevant period, characterised as a disease injury.
2. Employment was the main contributing factor to the contraction of the disease.
3. The deemed date of injury was the incapacity date.
4. The Respondent did not establish that the injury was wholly or predominantly caused by reasonable action with respect to transfer, and in any event the transfer-related conduct was not objectively reasonable on the facts found.
5. The Applicant had no current work capacity from the deemed injury date to the time of determination.
6. The Applicant had two injuries (a physical injury and a psychological injury) resulting in one incapacity.
7. Weekly compensation was awarded on the no-current-work-capacity basis for the relevant period and continuing, but the Commission exercised the statutory discretion to reduce weekly payments to prevent dual benefits, by offsetting amounts already paid for the physical injury during the same incapacity period.
8. The Respondent was ordered to pay the Applicant’s medical and related treatment expenses for the psychological injury.

Chapter 8: In-depth Analysis of the Judgment: How Law and Evidence Lay the Foundation for Victory

Special Analysis

This decision is jurisprudentially valuable because it shows, with uncommon clarity, how a psychological injury case can be won or lost on the quality of medical reasoning rather than on competing factual witnesses. It also illustrates the disciplined separation between:

• The existence of an injury (a medical-legal question),
• The reasonableness defence (a statutory policy filter for management action), and
• The prevention of double recovery (a payments integrity control).

The case also provides a practical roadmap for disputes where an employer seeks to reframe a worker’s distress as a reaction to “reasonable transfer action”, while the worker contends the injury arose from a chain of workplace events including unsafe exposure and coercive handling.

Judgment Points

1. Disease injury framing can simplify the causation contest
   The Commission treated the case as a disease injury pathway, requiring proof that employment was the main contributing factor. Once that was satisfied, the lesser “substantial contributing factor” pathway became irrelevant in the logical sequence applied.

2. Expert opinion must be built on accurate history
   The Commission’s rejection of the Respondent’s medical opinion was not a disagreement about psychiatric schools of thought. It was a finding that the opinion rested on an inaccurate narrative. That is a warning to all parties: even a credentialed expert can be sidelined if the report shows internal distortion or misreading.

3. The s 11A defence has two gates, not one
   The Respondent had to prove the injury was wholly or predominantly caused by transfer-related action, and that the action was objectively reasonable. The defence was not treated as a vague assertion of managerial prerogative.

4. Chain causation defeats “single trigger” arguments
   The Respondent attempted to collapse causation into a narrow trigger date tied to transfer. The Commission accepted that transfer was significant but found that multiple work events formed a chain of causation.

5. Dual benefits is not about denying entitlement; it is about calibrating payment
   The Commission accepted entitlement to weekly compensation for the psychological injury but reduced payable amounts under statutory discretion to prevent double weekly payment for the same incapacity.

Legal Basis

Key statutory provisions applied in the reasoning included:

• Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW)
  • s 4 (definition of injury; disease injury concept and the “main contributing factor” requirement for disease injury)
  • s 9A (substantial contributing factor test, displaced in practical effect once main contributing factor is established for disease injury)
  • s 11A (exclusion for psychological injury wholly or predominantly caused by reasonable action with respect to transfer and related matters)
  • ss 36–37 (weekly payments framework, including no-current-work-capacity basis)
  • s 33 (weekly compensation entitlement concept in dispute framing)
  • s 60 (medical and related treatment expenses)
  • s 46 (discretion to reduce weekly payments to prevent dual benefits of the same kind during and in respect of the incapacity)
• Workplace Injury Management and Workers Compensation Act 1998 (NSW)
  • mechanisms for liability dispute notices and review pathways (procedural context).

Evidence Chain

This judgment is a clean illustration of “Conclusion = Evidence + Statutory Provisions”. The Commission’s chain ran like this:

1. Workplace incident evidence:
   • The Applicant experienced verbal abuse by a parent in the workplace.
   • Contemporaneous internal records supported distress shortly after the incident.
2. Subsequent management handling evidence:
   • Communications and events concerning mediation, apology, and transfer proposals.
   • The Applicant’s evidence of feeling threatened and unsupported was not contradicted by competing direct evidence.
3. Medical evidence:
   • Treating psychiatrist and independent psychiatrist provided consistent diagnosis and work-related causation opinions.
   • Their reports described functional impairment consistent with incapacity and linked symptoms to the work stressors chain.
   • The Respondent’s medical opinion was rejected as unreliable because it depended on an incorrect factual premise.
4. Capacity evidence:
   • Certificates of capacity and psychiatric opinions supported no current work capacity from the incapacity date.
5. Overlap evidence:
   • The Applicant was already being paid maximum weekly compensation for a separate accepted physical injury from the same incapacity date.
6. Application of statutory controls:
   • Injury and causation established under disease injury pathway.
   • s 11A defence rejected.
   • Weekly payments awarded but reduced under s 46 to prevent dual benefits.

Judicial Original Quotation Principle

Context: The Commission had to decide whether the Respondent proved that transfer-related action was the dominant cause, and whether the conduct was objectively reasonable.

“The respondent fails to discharge its onus … wholly or predominantly caused.”

Why this statement was determinative:
The legal burden under s 11A sits on the employer once a compensable psychological injury is otherwise established. The Commission found the employer did not meet that burden because the evidence supported a chain of contributing events, not a single dominant cause.

A second determinative point concerned objective reasonableness:

“There is no way … objectively reasonable.”

Why this statement was determinative:
The Commission assessed reasonableness against what the employer knew: a long-serving worker, an aggressive parent with problematic conduct, and a process that pressured apology and threatened transfer rather than protecting staff. The finding emphasises that “reasonable action” is not measured by managerial preference, but by objective evaluation in context.

Analysis of the Losing Party’s Failure

The Respondent’s case failed along five critical lines that practitioners should treat as cautionary lessons:

1. A medical report that self-sabotaged its own reliability
   The Respondent’s medical opinion did not merely disagree with diagnosis; it relied on an extreme claim about insomnia that the Commission found inconsistent with the doctor’s own recorded history. Once that cornerstone cracked, the denial strategy lost its primary engine.

2. Inability to contradict the Applicant’s factual narrative with direct evidence
   The absence of competing witness accounts meant the Commission could accept the Applicant’s version where it was consistent with internal file notes and broader context.

3. Overreach in the s 11A framing
   The Respondent relied on transfer-related reasonableness but did not establish dominant causation, and the objective reasonableness assessment turned sharply against the Respondent because the facts painted a picture of coercion and inadequate protection.

4. Underestimating chain causation
   The Respondent’s narrative depended on the idea that the psychological condition was essentially caused by transfer. The Commission accepted transfer was significant but found multiple workplace stressors operated cumulatively.

5. Misalignment between the denial rationale and the factual context
   The Commission’s findings reflected a workplace safety reality: where external aggression is directed at staff, organisational handling that exposes staff to further confrontation or coerces apology can itself become part of the causative chain.

Key to Victory

The Applicant’s success was built on:

1. Consistency across evidence forms
   The factual narrative in statement material aligned with internal file notes and the histories recorded by specialists.

2. Specialist psychiatric evidence on diagnosis and causation
   Two psychiatrists reached consistent conclusions about major depressive disorder with anxiety or anxious distress, and linked it to specific workplace events.

3. Credibility supported by contemporaneous records
   Notes indicating the Applicant was observed distressed shortly after the incident gave the Commission a real-time anchor.

4. Strategic neutralisation of the Respondent’s expert
   The Applicant’s supplementary account of sleep disturbance and the specialist critiques exposed the fragility of the Respondent’s medical logic.

5. Clean statutory framing
   The Applicant advanced the disease injury pathway, meeting the main contributing factor test, and then resisted the s 11A defence by emphasising chain causation and objective unreasonableness.

Reference to Comparable Authorities

• Paric v John Holland Constructions Pty Ltd [1984] 2 NSWLR 505
  Ratio summary: Expert medical opinion must be assessed in a fair climate; where assumptions do not match established facts, the opinion’s weight can be substantially reduced.

• Jeffrey v Lintipal Pty Ltd [2008] NSWCA 138
  Ratio summary: Reasonableness for management action defences is evaluated objectively, by reference to what was done and the circumstances known to the employer.

• Cordina Chicken Farms Pty Ltd v Thoa Hong Le [2008] NSWWCCPD 125
  Ratio summary: A worker can suffer more than one injury, but the critical question is whether there are distinct incapacities or one incapacity arising from multiple injuries.

• Purkiss v Secretary, Department of Education [2022] NSWPIC 269
  Ratio summary: It is possible for two injuries to result in one incapacity; where weekly payments overlap for the same incapacity, statutory mechanisms may be used to prevent dual benefits.

Implications

1. Psychological injury cases are often won on accuracy, not volume
   The safest path is a coherent timeline that aligns with contemporaneous documents and is faithfully repeated across medical histories.

2. Employers must treat external aggression as a workplace risk, not a worker problem
   When a third party abuses staff, management responses that pressure staff to apologise or re-engage without proper safeguards can deepen harm and expand liability risk.

3. “Reasonable action” is not a label; it is a conclusion the evidence must earn
   Transfer decisions can be lawful in employment terms yet still fail the statutory reasonableness filter for psychological injury compensation when handled coercively or without regard to known risk.

4. If you already receive payments for one injury, do not assume a second injury is irrelevant
   A second injury can still be recognised and compensable; the practical effect may be an offset to prevent double weekly payment, rather than a denial of the second injury.

5. Litigation clarity protects wellbeing
   Early, calm documentation—emails, diary notes, medical attendance records—often becomes the steady backbone that carries a distressed person’s story into a legal forum with dignity and credibility.

Q&A Session

Q1: If the injury was mainly caused by a parent’s abuse, why is the employer responsible in workers compensation?
A: Workers compensation does not depend on proving the employer was morally at fault. The central questions are whether the injury arose out of or in the course of employment and whether employment causation thresholds are met. A third party’s conduct can still produce a compensable injury if it occurs in the workplace context and employment is the main contributing factor to the disease injury.

Q2: Can an employer always rely on “reasonable transfer” to defeat a psychological claim?
A: No. The employer must prove the injury was wholly or predominantly caused by the transfer-related action and that the action was objectively reasonable. Where the evidence shows multiple work stressors and the transfer process was handled in a way that increased risk or distress, the defence tends to fail.

Q3: Why did the Commission award weekly compensation if the worker was already being paid for another injury?
A: Because entitlement can exist for both injuries. The Commission then used the statutory discretion to reduce the payable amount to prevent dual benefits for the same incapacity. The legal point is not “no entitlement”, but “no double weekly recovery for the same incapacity period”.

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Appendix: Reference for Comparable Case Judgments and Practical Guidelines

1. Practical Positioning of This Case

Case Subtype: Workers Compensation — Primary Psychological Injury (Disease Injury) arising from workplace third-party aggression and alleged employer handling of transfer and mediation
Judgment Nature Definition: Final determination (conciliation and arbitration determination)

2. Self-examination of Core Statutory Elements

This section is for practical reference only. Outcomes tend to depend on detailed facts, contemporaneous documents, and the quality of medical reasoning.

Core Test Standards for Workers Compensation Psychological Injury in NSW (as applied in this case’s statutory environment)

① Injury characterisation and entry point
– Identify whether the alleged harm is properly characterised as a primary psychological injury.
– Determine whether it is pleaded and approached as a disease injury.
– Clarify the deemed date of injury, commonly aligned to the date of incapacity where the condition manifests in work loss.

② Disease injury and the “main contributing factor” test
– Establish that a disease was contracted in the course of employment.
– Establish that employment was the main contributing factor to contracting that disease.
– Practical indicators that tend to assist include:
– contemporaneous workplace records showing distress or deterioration;
– consistent reporting across treating practitioners;
– absence of persuasive non-work causation;
– coherent chronology connecting workplace events to symptom evolution.

③ Competing causation tests and their sequencing
– Where disease injury with main contributing factor is established, arguments about lesser causation thresholds often lose practical traction.
– In a contested case, parties should still prepare evidence addressing causation rigorously because characterisation disputes can arise.

④ Psychological injury exclusion: reasonable action with respect to transfer and related actions
To rely on the statutory exclusion for psychological injury, an employer generally needs to establish both:
– Dominant causation: the injury was wholly or predominantly caused by the reasonable action taken or proposed to be taken with respect to transfer (or other listed employment actions).
– Objective reasonableness: the action was reasonable when assessed objectively in context, including what was known to the employer at the time.

Practical risk markers that tend to weaken the defence include:
– pressure to apologise to an aggressor where the worker is plausibly a victim;
– inadequate notice of meetings, absence of agenda, and lack of support-person options;
– transfer presented in a way that reasonably feels punitive or coercive;
– evidence the employer knew of third-party risk but did not adequately protect staff.

⑤ Capacity and weekly compensation structure
– Establish whether the worker has no current work capacity, usually via:
– treating specialist opinions,
– functional evidence of daily living impairment, and
– consistency across certificates of capacity.
– Weekly payments are calculated within statutory maxima and structured periods.

⑥ Medical and related treatment expenses
– Establish that treatment is reasonably necessary and causally connected to the compensable injury.
– Provide documentary support: treatment plans, medication history, therapy records, and specialist rationale.

⑦ Dual benefits and one incapacity arising from two injuries
– If a worker is already receiving weekly payments for one injury and a second injury is found, the practical question becomes whether there are two distinct incapacities or one incapacity arising from two injuries.
– Where one incapacity is found, a reduction mechanism may be applied to prevent dual benefits of the same kind being paid during and in respect of the same incapacity.

Category 7 Library Content (Personal Injury and Compensation) — Core Tests (General Reference Only)

Core Test (Negligence under the Civil Liability Act):
– Was there a Duty of Care owed?
– Was there a Breach of Duty (was the risk foreseeable and not insignificant)?
– Did the breach cause the injury (Causation)?

Core Test (Damages):
– Does the Whole Person Impairment (WPI) exceed the statutory threshold (for non-economic loss in some jurisdictions)?
– Is there contributory negligence?

Practical note for this case type: Workers compensation is a statutory scheme and does not usually require negligence to be proven. However, understanding negligence concepts can still be relevant where parallel claims or broader safety obligations are discussed, or where factual analysis overlaps with risk control and foreseeability.

3. Equitable Remedies and Alternative Claims

This section considers possible “counter-attack” or alternative pathways where statutory compensation arguments become constrained. These are examples only and tend to depend heavily on jurisdiction, limitation periods, and employment status.

Procedural Fairness and administrative handling within an organisation
– If internal processes created an unreasonable risk of harm, consider whether:
– the worker was afforded fair opportunity to respond to allegations,
– meetings were conducted with adequate notice and support options, and
– decision-making showed an apprehension of bias toward appeasing a third party.
While procedural fairness is classically a public law concept, similar fairness considerations can be relevant in employment disputes, enterprise procedures, and investigations.

Ancillary pathways potentially relevant in workplace disputes
– If workers compensation benefits are limited or disputed, other pathways may sometimes be explored, depending on facts:
– workplace rights disputes under industrial relations frameworks where adverse action is alleged;
– discrimination pathways if protected attribute issues are factually grounded;
– work health and safety complaint pathways where systemic third-party aggression is not managed.

Equity concepts (limited relevance in this statutory compensation setting)
Promissory / Proprietary Estoppel:
– Did the employer make a clear and unequivocal representation about safety, role security, or non-transfer that the worker relied upon to their detriment?
– Would it be unconscionable for the employer to resile from that representation?

Unjust Enrichment / Constructive Trust:
– Generally low fit for workers compensation disputes, but may arise in separate property or benefit contexts.

Practical caution: These alternative avenues tend to require careful fact selection and may carry different cost, proof, and risk profiles compared with statutory compensation.

4. Access Thresholds and Exceptional Circumstances

Regular thresholds (general indicators, non-exhaustive):
– Timely notification and claim lodgement steps as required by the statutory framework and insurer processes.
– Medical evidence supporting diagnosis, causation, and capacity.
– Consistent reporting history that tends to withstand forensic scrutiny.
– Capacity definitions and payment periods set by the legislation and schedules.

Exceptional channels (examples, non-exhaustive):
– If a psychological injury is contested under a reasonableness defence, detailed evidence about context and objective risk can be decisive, including prior third-party behaviour, employer knowledge, and safeguards.
– If dual benefits issues arise, the exceptional question is often whether there are truly distinct incapacities; careful medical and functional analysis can be determinative.

Suggestion: Do not abandon a potential claim solely because a defence is raised. Compare the defence elements against your evidence. In many cases, the defence turns less on labels and more on whether the employer can prove dominant causation and objective reasonableness.

5. Guidelines for Judicial and Legal Citation

######Citation Angle:
– This authority is particularly useful where submissions involve:
– reliability and weight of psychiatric evidence where history accuracy is disputed;
– application of the reasonable action defence with respect to transfer in psychological injury claims;
– handling overlap where a worker has two injuries but one incapacity, including reduction to prevent dual weekly benefits.

######Citation Method:
– As Positive Support: Where an opposing expert opinion rests on a distorted or inaccurate factual premise, the reasoning supports discounting that opinion’s weight.
– As a Distinguishing Reference: If the other side cites this case to argue transfer is always a complete defence, distinguish by emphasising different facts: the absence of coercion, presence of safeguards, clear notice, and evidence of objective reasonableness, if available.

Anonymisation Rule:
– Use procedural titles such as Applicant and Respondent. Do not name parties.

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Conclusion

This decision shows that the outcome of a psychological injury case often turns on disciplined evidentiary architecture: credible narrative, contemporaneous workplace records, and specialist medical opinions built on accurate history. It also demonstrates that statutory defences for “reasonable action” are not shortcuts; they are burdens that must be proven with precision. Finally, it confirms that a worker may suffer two injuries yet have one incapacity, requiring statutory calibration to prevent double weekly recovery.

Everyone needs to understand the law and see the world through the lens of law. The in-depth analysis of this authentic judgment is intended to help everyone gradually establish a new legal mindset: True self-protection stems from the early understanding and mastery of legal rules.

Disclaimer

This article is based on the study and analysis of the public judgment of the Personal Injury Commission of New South Wales (Dous v Blacktown City Council [2025] NSWPIC 24), aimed at promoting legal research and public understanding. The citation of relevant judgment content is limited to the scope of fair dealing for the purposes of legal research, comment, and information sharing.

The analysis, structural arrangement, and expression of views contained in this article are the original content of the author, and the copyright belongs to the author and this platform. This article does not constitute legal advice, nor should it be regarded as legal advice for any specific situation.

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