Australia’s Department of Child Protection (DCP) must pay compensation and medical expenses to a youth worker who developed pericarditis after getting a Covid booster under a workplace vaccination directive, the South Australian Employment Tribunal has ruled.
In a decision handed down on January 15th 2024, the tribunal determined that Daniel Shepherd’s employment was “a significant contributing cause” to his injury, which has since rendered him incapable of performing his role at work.
Shepherd got a Covid booster in February 2022 as a requirement for his ongoing employment with the DCP. The DCP admitted that Shepherd’s pericarditis had been caused by the booster, but denied responsibility for the injury, arguing that it did not arise from Shepherd’s employment, but from a lawful State Government Public Health Order (PHO), issued under the Emergency Management Act 2004 (EMA).
However, the tribunal rejected the DCP’s argument, deciding that because the injury arose as a result of both the state-directed vaccination mandate and his employment, Mr. Shepherd was entitled to workers compensation.
“This is a good decision” says human rights lawyer Peter Fam of Sydney law firm Maat’s Method, noting that it sets an important precedent for holding employers accountable for injuries incurred as a result of vaccination directives enforced in the workplace.
“The most significant aspect of this case, in my opinion, is that even though there was a Public Health Order in place, the tribunal found the employer responsible anyway,” says Fam.
Many Australian employers have sought to deflect responsibility for injuries incurred under workplace Covid vaccine directives on the basis that they were simply following state Government orders.
However, under workers compensation law, the workplace is liable if employment is “a significant contributing cause of the injury”, regardless of whether other factors also contributed, explains Fam.
Therefore, despite the PHO stipulating that the worker must be vaccinated as a part of his employment, “the tribunal still found that the injury he suffered as a result of the vaccine was sufficiently related to his work and his employment for him to be compensated by the employer”.
Dr. Rado Faletic, a vaccine-injured scientist and Co-Founder and Director of Covid vaccine injury support charity COVERSE, says that the tribunal decision sends “a clear signal to employers that they have a duty of care to their employees regardless of what governments impose upon them”.
Yet, many Covid vaccine injured Australians are still falling through the cracks, says Dr. Faletic.
Based on the testimonies of injured Australians who have registered their details with COVERSE, Dr. Faletic says that in cases where the injuries are acknowledged by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), such as myo- or pericarditis, they are more likely to win workers compensation.
However, “when it comes to people with unacknowledged diagnoses or unclear diagnoses, this is where people are struggling to get compensated”, says Dr. Faletic.
Fam agrees that the fact that “there was no dispute” that Shepherd’s pericarditis injury was vaccine-related (the diagnosis was documented by two cardiologists) would have been beneficial to his case. Less common diagnoses “will be the challenge because there’s still a lot of fear with doctors and medical professionals in admitting causation”, says Fam.
Dr. Faletic is encouraged by the outcome, but remains highly critical of the lack of alternative pathways for Covid vaccine-injured Australians to receive support.
“For many injured Australians who have already lost a lot of money because of their injury, they just don’t have the resources to pay for lawyers to fight for compensation in the courts. Some are accepting paltry compensation offers that don’t even cover their costs because they don’t have the resources to fight it,” laments Dr. Faletic.
“The only remaining recourse is to rely on the Government compensation scheme, but the parameters are way too narrow,” he adds. Indeed, in the first 18 months of the Services Australia compensation scheme, only 164 out of a total of 3,160 claims had been approved, which is less than 5%.
The inadequacy of compensation options available to Australians injured by the Covid vaccines prompted Whitsundays GP Dr. Melissa McCann to initiate a Covid vaccine injury class action, which filed in the Federal Court in April 2023, and is still taking on members.
The action seeks to hold the TGA to account for alleged “negligence, breach of statutory duty and misfeasance in public office” in its failure to properly approve and monitor the Covid vaccines, resulting in harms to Australians.
Another class action is in development, with a member of the legal team having previously brought several successful class actions on behalf of bushfire victims.
Nevertheless, Fam believes the South Australian Tribunal decision is an important step forward because, “employers are on notice that they are liable for injuries suffered as a result of their policies and directions”.
Fam concludes, reflectively:
Sometimes corporations and Government departments have to actually experience the consequences of their actions before they think twice and correct course… It’s really sad that it’s taking people being seriously injured and killed for that to happen.
Cases like this will mean that employers are reluctant to implement policies enforcing medical procedures in the future, which is great, because they were never qualified to do so in the first place.
This article was originally published on Dystopian Down Under, Rebekah Barnettt’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Also for trial.
These medications were experimental. None had completed first phase testing when used, or indeed, by definition long term trials.
Coercion to take any experimental medication is illegal according to the Nuremberg Code, and indeed, our own Public Health Act.
People were hanged for this after WWII.
We don’t hang people these days, Jeremy. It’s uncivilised.
No, we give them knighthoods.
So if your employer insists you climb a ladder that’s tagged unsafe for use or you will be sacked , it’s not the same as being made to have the Jab ! & Yes people should hang !
Good to see the ‘just following orders’ defence being rejected. A lot more of the Nuremberg approach needed I think.
5% of 3160 is 158.
Why do you think they are putting the world on a war footing, because if the lid blows on the vaccine scam they’re going to need one hell of a distraction.
In the meantime, Andrew Bridgen MP asked Rishi S in the PMQs this afternoon in Parliament about what the Gov will do, and compared it with the Horizon scandal that they are involved in. According to Rishi, it’s still “safe and effective”. Watch this space.
“According to Rishi, it’s still “safe and effective”. Watch this space.”
Fishy is too effing useless, too much of a coward and too committed to lining his pockets to even contemplate rowing back. He’s now in too deep.
A treasonous, abject coward.
Racist!
He knows he’ll be safely in the USA when the lid blows.
Yes here’s the clip. And see how the lying vaxtard herd of toffs all agree with him. No wonder none of them want to attend Bridgen’s debates! Democidal chunts. They make me want to puke;
https://twitter.com/ABridgen/status/1752683386743730601
Thanks for the clip. Sounds he didn’t actually say “effective” at all – just “safe”. Evidently understood the question.
Just like the BBC covering Nicola Sturgeon today…”If only we locked down a week earlier. unfalsifiable clap-trap just like the climate hoax.
It was a feeble defence of the vaccines, he didn’t say “Covid vaccines are safe” with much conviction. I wonder if he meant to include the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, which was quietly withdrawn in June 2021.
It may have sounded like”the lying vaxtard herd of toffs all agree with him” but it sounded to me like quite a lot were quiet.
It will be interesting to see how many votes Andrew Bridgen gets in the election this year (if he stands). It’s very difficult for an independent or small party to win a seat, but I’m quite hopeful that he will retain it.
It’s relatively rare for an independent to win anywhere. Reminded me of Martin Bell winning Knutsford in 1997. Several stories from the usual sources and others if you search for: knutsford mp martin bell
Floodgates, anyone?!
I said very early on in this whole evil, dark, sorry affair that the legal fees and damages for jab injury and death will eventually dwarf the money these bastards stole from us for the PPE, the TrackAndTrace crap, the midazolam, remdesivir, the furlough payments and last but not least, the fucking jabs themselves.
And the worst? The people employed to process all these claims will be the very same people who profited from the first scam. Just like PPI, only several orders of magnitude larger.
Corporate murder too?
And what about practitioners who administered fatal or injury-causing jabs?
And in the case of my surgery are still pushing it.
Also guilty – pharma firms, “doctors”, “public health” officials, “regulators”, legislators.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/after-the-covid-cult-measles-mania/
Meanwhile we are facing a measles epidemic. Apparently.
Obviously we are not and it’s not as if it’s going to kill granny if we were but the priority is jabs in arms no matter how safe
and effective they are not.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/gun-police-against-unarmed-farmers-the-new-siege-of-paris/
In France the Micron has turned out 15,000 armed police – including tanks – to combat the farmers seige of Paris.
Brave warrior that he is, Micro is out of the country.
This is a battle we must win.
This is – unfortunately – unreadable garbage. The EU is ultimatively controlled by the elected governments of the member states which both set out general political goals of the EU and vote on whatever the European commission comes up with to implement these (the EU parliament also votes on that). Hence, the depicton of Emmerde Macron as being subordinate to the EU is total nonsense, as the EU institutions are just implementing what Emmerde and his lesser government pals wanted it to implement.
This battle won’t be won in this way.
Rubbish, RW, there’s nothing wrong with the article.
And who cares about the precise nature of whether it’s more Macron or the EU – they’re all the same, it’s a technicality. The point is that Net Zero stinks to high heaven and we and the farmers everywhere need to win this battle. Huxley is bang on.
I can’t see the police – armed or not – going into battle with the farmers. They’ll stand quietly by. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, the farmers set ablaze masses of straw at a major intersection and the police just stood there calmly, even chatting happily between themselves as they made a little effort to direct traffic the wrong way around the roundabout.
I’m happy to see all the French language signs turned upside down where I live in France.
Rubbish, RW, there’s nothing wrong with the article.
And who cares about the precise nature of whether it’s more Macron or the EU – they’re all the same, it’s a technicality.
The article is factually wrong in a point it keeps repeating. The EU commission doesn’t give orders to the French or any government. It’s responsible for turning orders by these governments into actual legislative proposals which may then be approved (or not) provided the member state governments (in form of a council of ministers whose subject areas are involved) like them (and also the EU parliament).
That people acting mostly as repeaters for US party propanda don’t care about such details (or any other details, for that matter, if those they’ve outsourced their thinking to don’t want to be bothered with them) is obvious. But since there’s a world beyond US presidental elections most people happen to live in, it’s necessary to care for them. The EU commission is just a furuncle (or rather, carbuncle) sitting on top of a b0rked system.
And so it begins. Come on you PI lawyers, emerge from behind the sofa.
A lot of employers received suitable warning letters ie putting them on notice of action if they mandated jabs as a condition of employment/continuing employment.
Employers such as this one for example-
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/pimlico-plumbers-charlie-mullins-vaccine-jab-policy-b920335.html
Insurers, the”government” and the NHS are going to have a nice game of pass the parcel on this one.
Sadly I think bigpharma will sit this one out – unless fraud re the jab trials is proven….
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/not-my-war-and-not-my-fight/
Generation Z have decided that Pro patria mori is not their cup of tea.
Back to the drawing board Fishy.
It will likely be in the round-up tomorrow but the news on the radio has Nicola Sturgeon’s biggest regret being, unsurprisingly, not locking-down earlier.
Ooof!
Stick it to em
I’m an employer.
Help me here because this seems to stink to me.
The Government sets a decree that ALL workers have to be vaccinated.
(Regardless of whether I agree with a mandate or not … which I do not)
What would be the consequence to me if I didn’t tell my employees that it was a government mandated condition of employment that they had to be vaccinated?
The Government would treat me as a criminal and arrest, prosecute and imprison me potentially.
So the employees take the vax … and some have injuries … and then I am expected to fund their compensation despite me totally disagreeing with the mandate in the first place.
This seems like a Catch 22 situation that the government has ALL the power and takes ZERO responsibility.
I am committing a crime if I don’t tell my employees they need to be vaxxed as a condition of their continued employment AND if they then do take the vax and are harmed I’m on the hook for compensation.
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
And this ‘Fam’ in the article thinks this is a good judgement …. and it seems supported by many on this thread.
I fail to see how this is remotely just.
If the Government issues an employment mandate then the Government should shoulder the consequences.
I accept if there is no Gov mandate and the employer creates one of their own volition then it is entirely appropriate they should be on the hook for consequences.
Am I missing something?
I don’t think so. But the vaccination mandate is technically a workplace hazard. That’s obviously detrimental to employers. But that’s what it was designed to be. Everyone’s being screwed. Which is precisely why the government technically never really had the right to issue such a decree. The people resonsible for it just believed (and so far, rightly so) that they’ll be getting away with it. Just as with Ferguson’s Italy! moment.