Solicitor providing Q & A with George Moore discussing Personal Injury

Tuesday, 3 August 2020

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GM – George Moore /DK – Dennis Kim /C1,2,3, etc – Callers

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GM       All right now. Have you been injured and it wasn’t your fault? Did you slip and fall at the shopping centre?  Maybe you had a car accident or an incident in the workplace, you could be entitled to a personal injury claim – it’s the topic of Legal Matters this week.  Now, laws are different across the states so if your question is more specific, you may need to contact Turner Freeman directly but as a…… and I’ll give you those details later, but as always, we have a $100 Westfield Voucher to give away to the caller who asks the most relevant question – there’s no biased here – Hansel will make the decision so I don’t have to even think about that which is good – Dennis Kim is a personal injury lawyer with Turner Freeman Lawyers in Sydney and he’s on the line for a chat with us.  G’day Dennis.

DK        G’day George, how are you?

GM       I’m very good thank you very much. That one about having a slip in the shopping centre, that actually happened to us some years ago, my wife actually witnessed a slip in the shopping centre and went over to help and nobody got sued I don’t think – but went over to help the elderly lady who had fallen in a pool of water or something and the people in the shop near it wanted to move her out of the way – nobody wanted the poor woman in front of their shop and it all ended well and you know the phone calls were made – the son came around and I think she was okay.  But things like that can get really really out of hand. So what are the basics of personal injury to make a claim? What’s got to happen?

DK        Sure – So I mean as you say these things can happen and hopefully for that poor lady it didn’t affect her too badly – but if it does, there’s a safety net that the law provides to people who have suffered loss – sometimes it can cause you to not be able to work anymore – sometimes you might need help around the home with things that you can do but now you might need to pay somebody to do it for you or your family and friends might be doing it out of the kindness of their heart but the law will then compensate you for that gratuitous assistance. There’s all sorts of ways you could be affected and some of these should be putting you back into the position you were before you were injured, particularly if it wasn’t your fault.

GM       All right – And look does the other person have to admit that it was their fault?

DK        No – and usually they don’t which is why people usually require legal representation.

GM       And what about the fact – can it be not just a physical injury – but what about the emotional injury? By the way that’s extremely hard to prove I would imagine – emotional injury?   

DK        Yes and no – I mean it’s not as observable as a broken arm or a broken leg but if you are caused a psychiatric or psychological injury because of an event and we can all think of examples where there are some horrific things people can be exposed to. That can permanently impact them psychologically. It’s not impossible to prove, I mean normally such people need treatment and to attend therapy and people around them might observe that their behaviour’s changed or that they can’t even get out of bed – it could that dramatic – so no – it’s not impossible to prove.

GM      All right – this question – oh by the way, 131 873 if you’ve got a question for Dennis – hop on the phones now – please don’t leave it too late – this often happens with these things – people leave it to the last minute and miss.  So 131 873.  I did hear a story – this may send shiver through management here at 2GB – I did hear a story recently about somebody who’d left their job and it’s like a year or several years later and maybe it was a back or something that went and the employer was responsible – I’m thinking of an old DJ working on the radio who leaves the radio station and a year or two later his hearing goes – has he got a case?

DK        Look, if he could prove that his hearing was fine before he started and there was nothing else in his life that could have caused it and it was not a congenital thing where he’s born with that condition then it may be able to be proven that it was the radio work.

GM       Oh – I listen to my music pretty loud – so I don’t think I would be able to prove it…….  What’s the most common – what’s the most common form of a personal injury case that you actually see or deal with?

DK        Look, it’s a good mix – I think there’s no one standouts but what do workers compensation and motor accidents and public place injuries like the shopping centre injury. Maybe a little less often we see things like assaults where they might have been criminally prosecuted but the victim hasn’t received much by way of compensation and they can claim civil damages as well.

GM       Okay – all right – We’ve got Peter here on the line who wants to have a word with you – Are you there Peter?

Caller 1 -Peter

Peter     Yeah – g’day – yep

GM       G’day mate – go ahead – Dennis is listening – off you go.

Peter     G’day Dennis – George – um yes – my wife about 5 years ago – she largely tore her shoulder and that and had surgery on it – after that the company where she worked – she developed fibromyalgia through this problem. She went through Court and all this sort of stuff with them – in the end she got to point where it was wearing thin and she took a payout of – I thought a very low amount – she was sick of fighting – Her fibromyalgia is never going to get back – it’s getting worse – do we still have a leg to stand on to go back and say look it’s not getting better – it’s getting worse – we feel like we were done wrong in the first place when they terminated her?

DK        Right – was a workers compensation claim or a damages claim?

Peter     It was workers compensation – it went under workers compensation in the ACT not up here.

DK        Right okay – I’m not familiar with the workers compensation in the ACT but in New South Wales, if you’ve had an injury that’s caused you permanent impairment, you get what’s called a lump sum payment and if you receive a lump sum payment prior to June 2012 or the claim was made prior to then – you do get another bite at the cherry but if it’s been made beyond that date – that was the cut-off that the government created new laws to say beyond this point, everyone gets only one lump sum compensation claim – so I’m not too sure about the ACT – but I know that’s the case in NSW for workers compensation – for other fields of law, usually it is the one settlement or one resolution is all that you get.

GM       All right good on you Peter – thank you very much. Now I think Dennis is here – no – Dennis is here – hahahha – It’s Corina sorry – I’m looking at two lines here.  Corina are you there?

Caller 2 – Corina

Corina             Yes I am yes.

GM                 Go ahead

Corina            Oh hi.  I’m just calling up in relation to my mother. She had a pre-existing condition – she had dementia and she ended up in a public hospital for medication management.  Whilst there she fell over and broke her hip requiring a hip replacement in the public hospital and it appears whilst they were operating on her, she probably had a bit of a stroke – but they have never acknowledged that – so she is – now she could not be rehab’d – she’s wheelchair bound – had to go to a nursing home from previously living at home with me with dementia – walking, feeding herself, functional – you know – fairly functional just needing minimal assistance to be in a nursing home.

DK        Yes – Look I…….

Corina  She’s lost everything basically – her quality of life – her family – her home – yeah and the cost has been astronomical.

DK        Yes, I mean I’m sure than financially it’s just a complete change in her level of functioning and I’m sure it must be hard for the family as well.  ……..

Corina  Well I am the daughter, yeah – I did look after her at home for ……. after that….

DK        Look, we have had similar cases – the key questions come down to whether the hospital was aware that she was a fall risk and whether they took reasonable steps.

Corina  Oh God yeah – yeah – they took her out of the falls – the high fall risk room actually because they had a gastro outbreak in the hospital, so that’s in there – when I challenged them on it – so basically they all banded together and it was at the time – you know – it was so traumatic what had happened – I just had to deal with it – so to take them on it was just impossible.

DK        How long ago are we talking?

Corina  Oh it will be 3 years coming up in September the 9^th.

DK        Right – well we’ll grab your details and perhaps we should have a conference after this segment to give you some proper advice.

GM       Just stay there Corina – stay on the line and we will take your details. Dennis thank you – can you hang on a second – we’ll take a break and we’ll come back with more.  We’re talking legal matters of course with Turner Freeman – Back in just a moment.

              All right we’re talking legal matters with Turner Freeman – we’ve got Dennis Kim on the line with us – are you there Dennis?

DK        Yes I am.

GM       Okay we’ve got Neil here for you – go ahead Neil.

Caller 3 – Neil

Neil        Hi guys – thanks for taking the call. So my work – My work – it’s a government agency so I am not going to mention who they are – required me to go and take some surgery on my kidney – so the specialist thought that I do – and the surgeon I was referred to said – look I’m going to take you through the procedure – you shouldn’t be any worse of if it doesn’t work – 50/50 chance of it working or not – and we will see if we can go ahead – and the work and obviously approved it – I went and had the surgery and [saw the specialist] six weeks later and he said “Oh sorry I’ve made your situation worse”. And now I have some pain in my kidney and I’ve not actually been referred by him to a different guy to have that section of my kidney removed entirely. So I was kind of wondering whether there is anything in that.

DK        Right okay – Look I’d think I’d have to ask a whole range of questions to work out whether or not there is something in that. There are types of questions I would need to ask – like things like what risks were put to you – did you understand those risks?  Would you have gone through with the surgery had you been given notice of those risks if they hadn’t given them to you at the outset? Also whether – the procedure was performed properly and within the professional standards that are expected of that particular doctor – the thing is sometime with medicine – a doctor could do everything by the book and because of a quirk in an anatomy or you know something else which is not well understood, things can still have a bad outcome – it may not necessarily be because of negligence, so there is quite a bit of investigation I’d need to go through with you to work out whether or not there are prospects but that is something that we could look into with you afterwards.

GM       All right just stay there Neil and Hansel will get you those phone numbers for Turner Freeman Lawyers. Dennis thank you very much for coming on today – always a pleasure to have chat.  Thank you.

DK        That’s okay – you’re welcome. Thank you.

GM       No problem. Dennis Kim there from Turner Freeman Lawyers. Now you can visit them online – turnerfreeman.com.au – their phone number is 13 43 63. Hansel tells us the $100 Westfield voucher went to Corina of Beverly Park – good on you Corina and she’s the lady who suffered the injury after slipping in a hospital okay – so you’ve got the $100 voucher from Westfields.  Thanks to Turner Freeman Lawyers.