SOBOT v DUNLOP AUSTRALIA LTD [1994] NSWCA 289

SOBOT v DUNLOP AUSTRALIA LTD

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

MEAGHER Ap, HANDLEY and COLE JJA 7 September 1994, 7 September 1994 [1994] NSWCA 289

WORKERS' COMPENSATION — incompetent appeal — no question of principle: Azzopardi v Tasman UEB Industries Ltd (1985) 4 NSWLR 139 applied.

Compensation Court Act, 1984, s32.

Handley JA This is an appeal by a worker, Mrs Zora Sobot, from a decision of his Honour Judge Freeman (then a judge of the New South Wales Compensation Court) given as long ago as 19 August 1986, dismissing her claim for compensation against her former employer, Dunlop Australia Ltd, arising from an alleged injury at work in or between January and May 1981.

His Honour concluded, for reasons he expressed in some seven pages, that the applicant had not made out a case that she had suffered an employment injury during her employment with Dunlop Australia during 1981.

Mr Skiller has said everything that could possibly be said on behalf of the appellant in support of the appeal. However, cases heard in the Compensation Court in 1986 could only be appealed to this Court consistently with the restrictions in s32 of the Compensation Court Act, 1984, which at that time, relevantly, limited an appeal to one on questions of law. Mr Skiller has struggled to identify some error of law in the judgment of Judge Freeman on which to support the present appeal. In my opinion, and with all respect, he has not been able to identify any error of law in the judgment.

The decision of this Court in Azzopardi v Tasman UEB Industries Ltd (1985) 4 NSWLR 139 stands, in my view, as a fatal obstacle in Mr Skiller's path in attempting to identify some error of law in the judgment of Judge Freeman. The best that counsel was able to do in his written and oral submissions was to submit that the trial Judge misdirected himself on the interpretation and conclusion which should be reached as a matter of reasonable inference from the medical and other evidence. So stated, the question can be seen to be one of fact and not of law.