ASSESSMENT TASK 1 (CASE NOTE) COVER SHEET

I. CASE NOTE DETAILS:

1. Course Code: LAW2447 (Commercial Law)

2. Name: TRAN MINH ANH

3. ID: S3758857

4. Group: 2

5. Lecturer’s name: Esmira Hackenberg

1. Introduction
The case D’Arcy v The Corporation of the Synod of the Diocese of Brisbane
[2019] QSC 103 is about the plaintiff who was a personal care worker suffered
an accident while doing her job, since she has not been trained by the company
that hired her, Spiritus – the defendant – about how to unload safely a wheelie
walker from a transportation. The final adjudgment for this case was decided by
judge Byrne SJA at the Supreme Court of Queensland on April 18th and 19th,
2017. The following case note will inform the personal point of view through
the case law inspection of the decision to reckon if the judgement is persuasive
enough. To be more specific, the note identifies the legal issues, critical analysis
when applying the legitimate regulation to solve the situation, then, the
conclusion.

2. Identification of the legal issue(s)

Following the case, the plaintiff is Natalie Kathleen D’Arcy who was thirty-
seven at the time, her job is to pick up the clients to the medical appointments
and bringing them back home. On October 5th, 2010, after dropping of an
elderly woman who had limited mobility and must use the wheelie walker, Ms
D’Arcy got injured on the left side of her lower back while struggling to unload
the assistive device. At the Supreme Court Of Queensland, the plaintiff notified
that Spiritus did not give her any training about how to unloading the wheelie
walker, therefore, Ms D’Arcy claimed that Spiritus owed her duty of care. She
has not been provided the Manual Handling Guidelines, which informed the
how to identify and control the risks occurred in manual handling of people and
objects. The main problem is that the judge has to inspect whether the defendant
takes responsibility for the plaintiff negligence, whether or not the accident is
formerly seen by the defendant and can be prevented.
3. A critical analysis of the judge’s application of the legal rules to
solve the legal issues
According to the case, the plaintiff has described what she did in details when
the accident happened, which is absolutely opposed to the “NIOSH” criteria.
Moreover, Brendan McDougall is an expert engineer in the care service industry
and is well-known for his speech about the high rate of musculoskeletal injuries.
He declared that the plaintiff activities are doubtlessly in danger. Furthermore,
there was no evidence shows that the plaintiff has been handed the “Handling
Manual Guidelines” and been educated about the threat she might suffer at
work, when she started working for the company. More specifically, there was
an additional note in the guidelines that the manager was responsible to ensure
training is provided in the best way and the employees must attend and
maintaining the manual handling skill for the position they undertake. Also, the
guidelines noted that the workers would accomplish the assessment of manual
handling skills and proficiency earlier than expected. This was proved to be
evacuated in the case of the plaintiff when she did not attend in any training but
went on with her job right away. Due to Mr. McDougall, the possibility of harm
was not noteworthy, which could be averted if Ms D’Arcy was guided by the
handling methods. In additionally, this is a problem that Spiritus could have
been aware of. However, there was no training available, the plaintiff was put
into a hazardous plot, where the situation was possible to occur. Over and above
that, following the analyzation, it was proven that the defendant did not indicate
to fulfilled their duty of care to the plaintiff. Overall, there was no other related
legal problems and arguments that the court did not go through. Therefore, I
totally agree with the court’s decision, the defendant breached the plaintiff duty
of care. As the result, Ms D’Arcy won this case.
4. Other important requirements for the case note:
In the nutshell, the judge has arbitrated an accurate conclusion.
Basically, the court has solved all the conflicts between the two sides,
which comes to a precise result.