Court decides what is reasonable

Oct 2013

The 36 year old plaintiff, Ian Larkin,    worked as an insurance sales officer at the Suncorp call centre in Toowoomba when he struck his knee on a cupboard door handle in 2008. The offending handle was situated on cupboards beneath a bench which contained a fax, phone and photocopier. The phone was used by workers for personal calls and had been used by the plaintiff for a personal call just prior to him striking his knee. 

The handles were rectangular shape and protruded about 3.8cm from the cupboard. The judge accepted the defendant's witnesses' evidence that the phone had been on the bench many years. The judge also accepted that the processing officer who had worked at the bench from 2004 to 2011 for five hours per day had never had any problems with the handles. This is despite the fact her job entailed her moving up and down the bench. 

The judge accepted the defendant's witnesses were unaware of anyone else at the office, which contained 300 workers, ever having a problem with the handles. There was no evidence by the plaintiff to the contrary. The judge accepted these handles were on 300 cabinets in the office, but noted these were not at knee height. 

The judge ruled in favour of the plaintiff. 

The judge found the fact there was a telephone on the bench could bring the worker in contact with the handle and as such the Defendant was in breach of it's duty of care. He found the handles should have been replaced by recessed handles. 

Suncorp appealed.  It claimed that the primary judge erroneous in ruling as irrelevant, the evidence evidence of no similar injuries - despite there being hundreds of cupboards in the call centre with similar handles - because none of the other handles were at knee height. 

The appeal judges agreed also finding highly persuasive, the testimony of co-workers, that they had worked at the same bench for several hours daily and had never injured their knees on the cupboard handles, nor had they heard of anyone else doing so. 

The risk of injury posed by such handles was “slight”, they ruled and the risk “of serious injury was low”. The primary judge had erred by failing to consider how in the absence of any handle related injuries, a reasonable employer could have foreseen the risk of injury. 

Even if a reasonable employer had foreseen such a risk, they could not have been expected to predict that the handles constituted any higher risk than that of minor bruising. 

Suncorp’s appeal was allowed; there was no breach of its duty of care.

Larkin’s lower court judgement of $245k was reversed.   

Larkin v Suncorp Staff Pty Ltd [2013]