Darling Island Stevedoring & Lighterage Co Ltd v Hankinson [1967] HCA 10

High Court of Australia Barwick C.J. Kitto, Taylor, Menzies and Owen JJ. Darling Island Stevedoring & Lighterage Co Ltd v Hankinson [1967] HCA 10

ORDER Appeal dismissed with costs.

Cur. adv. vult.

The following written judgments were delivered:—

April 27 Barwick C.J.

The appellant employer appeals against a decision of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (Court of Appeal Division) holding that a Commissioner of the Workers' Compensation Commission of that State was entitled upon the evidence before him to make an award of compensation to the respondent worker without setting any terminal date to its operation.

The respondent was employed by the appellant as a wharf labourer on 3rd September 1964 when, whilst lifting a bale of paper with a hook held in his hand, he felt a sharp pain between his shoulder blades. He received some medical attention and continued working during that day. From then on he did not work because unable to do so. By 21st September he was paralysed and unable to walk.

Medical examination established to the learned Commissioner's satisfaction that, although himself unaware of it, the respondent prior to and on 3rd September was suffering from a staphylococcal infection of portion of his spine which had so far advanced that the bodies of two of his vertebrae were honeycombed and so weakened that they were ready to collapse upon even so slight an exertion as bending down to tie a shoe lace. The respondent's effort in lifting the bale of paper had in fact caused them to collapse. By that event the respondent was incapacitated for work.

But the collapse of these diseased vertebrae had sequelae though their precise nature and course are not very fully disclosed in the medical evidence. It would seem that the collapse of the vertebrae caused a rupture of a containing membrane, thus allowing the spread of the infection which in turn led to a blockage in the spine, a consequence which brought on a paraplegic condition paralysing the respondent. But, whatever the full medical explanation, the causal relationship between the collapse of the vertebrae and the end result of paralysis was, in my opinion, sufficiently evidenced by a series of questions which ended with one put by the Commissioner and answered as follows: