The company never bought the insurance the law required, and never showed up to fight the claim

A dancer left tetraplegic by a falling concert screen won HK$6.29 million on 15 June 2026, when Judge Phillis Loh assessed his compensation.

The award in Li Kai Yin v Studiodanz Company Limited follows what the court called a catastrophe. On 28 July 2022, while performing in the MIRROR.WE.ARE Live Concert 2022 at the Hong Kong Coliseum, Li Kai Yin was struck by a giant LED display panel that fell from height. He was 27 then and is 31 now, still in rehabilitative treatment, and was assessed as suffering a permanent 100 percent loss of earning capacity.

His employer, Studiodanz Company Limited, never took part. The company had already been convicted on 15 November 2023, on its own guilty plea, of failing to take out employees' compensation insurance to cover him, in breach of section 40(1) of the Employees' Compensation Ordinance. Liability was settled by an interlocutory judgment in July 2025, leaving only the size of the award. The employer entered no appearance and was absent from every hearing, conduct the judge said raised "a clear suspicion that R was evading service and, for that matter, liability." The court deemed service valid and pressed on without it.

Much of the case turned on how to value the earnings of a freelance performer who took cash and was also paid by cheque, PayMe and FPS across at least four studios with no fixed hours. Bank deposits in the year before the...

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