A judge has awarded a woman almost $150,000 in compensation over injuries she suffered in a crash on a busy Sunshine Coast road, but has been unwilling to accept her degree of incapacitation.
Court documents say the woman’s sedan was stationary in heavy traffic on Caloundra Road on March 25, 2021, when a dual-cab utility collided with the rear of her car.
The nail technician alleged she suffered a neck and shoulder injury and was not able to work as long hours as before the accident or do various forms of housework, such as mopping, vacuuming or hanging out washing.
The woman had wanted an $850,00 payout but the insurer, while willing to accept her neck injury, did not accept the accident was the cause of a shoulder injury as described by the woman and had only offered $96,500.
Judge Glen Cash, in a written decision delivered last month after a hearing in the Maroochydore District Court last June, said the woman gave evidence that she felt no pain after the accident until she woke up the morning after.
“She described experiencing a headache and pain down her right arm, with a ‘pins and needles’ sensation in her middle and ring fingers,” Judge Cash said.
“(She) said that she experiences headaches every day and her shoulder constantly hurts.”
However, photos and video from social media were presented to the court that, with expert opinion, left the judge questioning the woman’s claims.
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Referring to photo of the woman sitting on a railing at Point Cartwright, Judge Cash said an occupational therapist generally agreed that she could not have got herself there with her shoulder injury and she would have been in pain if her boyfriend had lifted her up there.
Referring to photos of her drinking from a can on separate occasions, with her elbow perpendicular to her body and head titled back, the judge said her “capacity to pose in this way in each photograph, without reported pain, is inconsistent with her evidence of the extent of her symptoms”.
The judge found that the woman “did not show any signs of pain or discomfort” in a montage of videos from a staff party showing her drinking a shot with her right arm, doing the splits and pushing a mop with a dancing action.
The judge said he was conscious that uploads to social media do not always represent reality, and that photographs and videos are only “a snapshot or a moment in time”.
“It is appropriate to be cautious in drawing conclusions from such evidence. But in this case the evidence is not one or two images. It is a series of images and videos over time from which a conclusion may be more comfortably drawn,” he said.
Judge Cash said the woman’s failure to tick “chronic injury” on a massage therapy form and her denial of a conversation with a doctor that she later admitted to demonstrated there were times she had been “less than candid”.
He was not satisfied that it was “more probable than not” that the woman had suffered a shoulder injury to the degree she claimed but he accepted she had a neck injury that had forced her to work reduced hours after the accident.
He awarded her $50,000 for lost past income and $75,000 for lost future income, plus smaller amounts for general damages, lost superannuation, general care and expenses, and interest, totalling $148,826.49.
Sunshine Coast News contacted the insurer, QBE, which declined to comment on the case.
