Thursday, 7 November 2002
STATE OF NEW SOUTH WALES v COFFEY
Judgment
1 MEAGHER JA: This is an appeal by the State of New South Wales against a judgment by Hosking DCJ in an action in which Mr Coffey (the present respondent) obtained a judgment against it in the sum of $463,947.00. He worked as a caretaker/manager/concierge of blocks of Housing Commission flats, first at "The Pottery" Belvoir Street, Surry Hills, Sydney; and then, from July 1988 to December 1996, at the "John Northcott Flats" in the same street.
2 The inhabitants of these flats were a motley crew. Many of them had psychiatric disorders. Some of them had been patients at institutions. Some were addicted to drugs or alcohol, or both. Most of them were foreigners, and many of them were female.
3 Mr Coffey's duties were wide and varied. He was responsible for the signing of leases, maintenance of the properties, control of rent arrears (which were always considerable), the investigation of nuisances, the prevention of unauthorised persons living in the buildings, supervising contractors, arranging for the transfers of tenants and liaising with fire brigades, social workers and the police.
4 He worked in an office which had an open counter. Tenants would come to the counter, and abuse and threaten him. One tenant used to yell at him, flourish a knife and threaten to kill him. Equally unpleasant was the experience of being bombarded with letters from Mrs Clover Moore MLA, falsely accusing him of manifold irregularities. On an occasion he received a summons accusing him of assault.
5 He asked for security screens to be erected on the counter, but they were not. He asked for legal support, but got none.
6 But that is only the lesser side of his tribulations.
7 What was far worse was the number of murders or suicides the results of which Mr Coffey had to deal with. He gave a list of about 13 such cases, and said in evidence he could add extensively to that list. Many of the details are disgusting: identifying five half-faceless bodies, identifying a corpse who had been hanging for about 5 weeks in his room, cleaning up the footpath after a large lady had jumped 4 storeys to her doom. Worst of all was cleaning up the mess after the corpse had been removed.
8 When he left his job in 1996 he was suffering depression, post traumatic stress disorder and chronic dysthymia. There is no evidence that he was other than of normal fortitude before he was employed.
9 It is only common sense that the Department of Housing, which is a branch of the appellant State, and which received notification and details of each incident as it happened, could reasonably have foreseen that a person in Mr Coffey's position, if left without support, would suffer at least some stress, and if the experience were long enough and the incidents repeated often enough, the stress would slide into the sort of psychiatric injuries which I have listed.
10 The plaintiff, Mr Coffey, alleged that there was something which the appellant could have done about it, but did not. It could have rotated Mr Coffey into other jobs, it could have provided him with a grille over the counter of his office, and - most importantly - it could have provided him with some sort of systematic counselling.
11 There was evidence before his Honour, which he evidently accepted, of the general desirability of such steps. For example, Dr T O Clark, in a report stated 13 April 2000, said:
"They should be trained and counselled to deal with such situations. Many young people are inexperienced and frightened of the clientele and staff are attacked.
From time to time there should be retraining and re-counselling. The process would be ongoing.
There should be post-traumatic counselling. This is anyway automatic under WorkCover rules, similar to State Rail practice in this area.
There should be a system by which employees in the "firing line" are kept under some form of observation or monitoring to avoid "a final crack up", as the vernacular has it. A regular review of coping styles, skills and how the workers are effecting (sic) this should be part of quality assurance.
There should be a system of rotating people in and out of these positions every so often to relieve the stress on them. This applies particularly to all the high-density housing projects.
As far as I have been informed none of these strategies have been instituted in the Department. Counselling is offered but it is up to the individual to seek it out.
All other service providers be it police, ambulance persons, fire or SES officers all go in pairs when working in Housing Commission projects. However Housing Commission staff have no such consideration."