Wood v Safe Places Community Services Ltd
[2024] QDC 92 · Coker DCJ
Kirsty Wood worked as a residential care worker for young people, where she was repeatedly exposed to assaults, threats and distressing incidents over several years, developing post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. She tried hard to keep working, changing jobs twice, before being hospitalised for psychiatric treatment in late 2021 and early 2022, when her psychiatrist told her she would never be able to work full-time again. Because part of her claim ran over a long period and was filed outside the usual time limit, she asked the court to extend the limitation period. The legal question was whether she had learned a new and important fact, that she could never return to work, only recently enough to justify the extension. The court accepted that this knowledge only became clear to her during her hospital stays, and that she had reasonably tried to get on with her life and work before then. The court extended the limitation period so the claim could proceed.
Incident & injury
Psychological/psychiatric injury sustained over a period of time from a cumulative series of stressful and assaultive workplace incidents while working as a residential youth care worker, including being struck with a water bottle, witnessing self-harm, and being assaulted by clients.
- Body regions
- Psychiatric
- Diagnoses
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Major depressive episode
- Incident date
- 2 September 2019
- Location
- Townsville, Queensland
Quick facts
- Date of judgment
- 14 June 2024
- Claim type
- WCRA Common Law
- Proceeding
- Interlocutory
- Plaintiff outcome
- Successful
- Plaintiff age at injury
- Occupation
- Youth/residential care worker (disability and community services support worker) Community & Personal Service Worker
Outcome
The court granted the applicant's application under s 31 of the Limitation of Actions Act 1974 (Qld) to extend the limitation period for her over-a-period-of-time psychiatric injury claim to 22 November 2022, finding that the decisive material fact, her permanent inability to work, conveyed by her treating psychiatrist Dr Hay during hospitalisation in late 2021/early 2022, was not within her means of knowledge earlier. Costs of the application reserved.
Key issues
Wood v Safe Places Community Services Ltd [2024] QDC 92
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Learn more about WorkCover common law claims and psychological injury claims in Queensland.