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.
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Why weren’t mummy and daddy forced to repay the £10,000 damage to the picture frame?
Because the miscreants are adults, at least in terms of age.
I don’t like exemplary sentences.
Two years for wrecking a frame that cost $10,000 and can be easily replaced seems excessive. Replacing the value, a fine and community service would do.
(And for the avoidance of doubt I think JSO activists are as idiotic as their cause.)
It’s a strange world really though. I come back to the horrible things that people in authority do to others on a regular basis, sometimes quite knowingly. Like the invasion of Iraq or the untold damage done during the covid madness.
We definitely live in a multi tiered justice system. The more senior a position of authority you have, the more damage and destruction you can get away with.
You would definitely put and stop to the endless expansion of the state if people in authority would be made to pay for the consequences of their actions.
I am sure there are many like me who applaud the sentences.
The actual value of the damaged propery should be irrelevant. The tariffs for sentencing (the guidlines for judges) to not have a monetary value attached.
Agreed, and I agree with the below comment. It’s not like they’ll even serve all of that time anyway. Meanwhile, my bigger concern is that the UK ( and elsewhere, seemingly ) has a society that is trying to normalize paedophilia. Look at the non-sentences doled out for those caught with child sex abuse images as a comparison. These people get to go about their lives, rub shoulders with decent people, nobody’s checking if they’re keeping a distance from children ( Christ, some of them have children! ) and try their level best not to get caught next time, because this isn’t something that you can just shut off in your brain;
”Two years for the very personification of entitled moronism.
For the first time in her life there are consequences to her actions. It’s… what’s the word I’m looking for? I know: DELICIOUS.
It’s tough way to grow up – but you’ve earned every single second. Your parents should be slopping out with you.”
https://x.com/KiszelyPhilip/status/1839673198142455981
But this Pheobe person is doing this stuff all of the time. When does it become necessary to stop these people? After one incident like this or after 20 incidents. The justice system has actually been very lenient with these people.
Why can’t we just leave these people glued to the wall? Let’s see how they would feel after a few days.
Exactly. Certainly my preferred way of dealing with these Next Tuesdays.
Or glue them together… because if you can’t beat them, join them!
But seriously though that is not a bad idea. They are suggesting that it is our collective responsibility to save the planet by eradicating fossil fuels and and plunging ourselves into the dark ages. So whose responsibility is it to unglue them from the wall? Let the museum close and they can spend the night. If our oil usage has consequences, then so do your tomato soup and glue fetishes.
Maybe after a few days somebody could bring them some soup!
Their cause to many sounds noble and getting rid of fossil fuels sounds plausible. But actually it is not noble to deny the third world fossil fuels that would alleviate their misery and it is not plausible to be rid of fossil fuels since they supply 85% of the worlds energy. ——–So their cause is one based entirely on faith and emotion rather than fact and reason. I blame government and a compliant media for having brainwashed these easily manipulated people into thinking there is a climate apocalypse just around the corner, when infact there is no evidence that CO2 from fossil fuels use is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate.
imagine the smell.
Hmm. Could enter them into the Turner Prize?
Or maybe Lego could bring out new enviro sets from various scenes from all this. A couple of Lego characters with hands stuck to a road blocking a Lego Ambulance? Oh! wait…
https://toybook.com/lego-sustainability-news/
Such as this
With people crawling all over the tanker and fiddling with it, where’s the explosion?
Let us remember, back in 2008, when Hedge Fund Billionaire Jeremy Grantham set up the Grantham Research Unit Climate Fraud outfit, including Mega Liar Bob Ward, PhD (failed).
Ward became famed as “fast fingers Ward” and was the go-to guy for all the MSM in their Reality-Denier scams.
Of course, Grantham then had, and very likely still has a portfolio of oil firms.
He also set on our old chum Neil (Professor Pantsdown) Ferguson. The Pandemic and general medical prognosticator that has never been less than one order of magnitude exaggerating risk and outshone himself in some “five orders of magnitude” super scares.
The very bloke who was chosen by the blue arse cheek of the Uniparty to help Stalin’s Nanny Susan Michie in her agit prop nudging.
Now elevated to the WHO, together with Welcome Trust’s Jeremy Farrar.
So, are Grantham (and Kyte) somehow to be considered ax Big Oil people?
Well in some sense. I’m certain that Grantham and his chums are bright enough to have no doubt that Net Zero is bollox on stilts.
But destroying coal in the UK (obviously not in China, India, Indonesia etc.) was a good move in boosting the value of his oil stocks. Gas will be next to be destroyed and Ed Milibrain (of Climate Change Act 2008 again) is now facilitating this endgame).
And destroying Western Economies is the ultimate aim.anyway, as Christina Figueres has confirmed.
That tin of tomato soup could have gone to a food bank. What a bunch of degenerates!
Throwing food around is what toddlers do in high-chairs.
Vastly over-rated. Heinz soup and the picture. That said, it’s damage to someone’s property so whatever the law says for that.
I think MajorMajor has it right: Leave them there. Just to make sure nobody assaults them put some sort of barrier around them (which might accidentality also mean that none of their mates could come along and free them). I also think that’s what should be done when people glue themselves to the road – a few bollards and a hi-vis tarpaulin to try to make sure nobody runs them over – then get the traffic moving around them. Similar for the M25 gantry protests – a quick net fixed underneath and then get the traffic moving again.
Activism is all well and good. If there is injustice that is clear by all means, We often hear the supporters of JSO and Extinction Rebellion etc compare them to the Suffragettes, but these people were protesting about rights for women and the vote. But it was crystal clear that women were not being allowed the vote. Climate Change being caused by the use of fossil fuels is not so clear. It is riddled with uncertainty and is always a question of degree. There has to be an evaluation of cost/benefit and the benefit of fossil fuels is clear. They have brought billions of people out of abject poverty, and this is the part of the equation that JSO etc simply do not accept, basically because they understand virtually nothing about how energy works. So we cannot have energy policy based on faith and emotion, and there comes a point where the activism goes too far all based on irrational fear. These climate activists are starting to go too far and they must be nipped in the bud before people get seriously hurt or worse.
The issue of votes for women was not at all clear. As late as 1917 many working class men did not have the vote either – it wasn’t just women who were not enfranchised. And much of the opposition to votes for women came from women themselves.
Judge Christopher Hehir…told the activists to come to court “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison…”
Many years ago, at a time when UK football hooliganism was world news, a taxi driver in Singapore took me on a tour, and drew up outside a large grim 19th-century brick building. It was Changi jail. ‘No hooliganism in Singapore,’ he stated with a proud air. ‘You get the cane here, you don’t sit down for six months.’
With our prisons full, and offenders undeterred by the thought of a little comfy custody at the public expense, maybe it’s time to look East and rediscover how we used to deal with juvenile delinquents. Maybe Judge Hehir should have told the soup-flingers to prepare not to sit down for 6 months.
We obviously need to heed their great wisdom and knowledge. They have shown us such great incites into the abyss the world is headed into if we do not stop using oil. So young to know so much. What really drives them is their narcissistic egos looking for attention and purpose. We can only hope they grow up some day, but living in their urban protected group think bubbles, there is doubt they will.