Employer challenged a binding panel opinion - and a court found it skipped a key step
A Victorian court has ordered a fresh medical assessment of a truck driver's back injury, asking whether his job or his farm did the damage.
In a judgment handed down on June 23, 2026, the Supreme Court of Victoria quashed a Medical Panel opinion that had tied a long-serving driver's spinal injury to his work for road builder Fulton Hogan - finding the panel overlooked records suggesting he was shearing sheep just before surgery.
The worker had driven trucks for Fulton Hogan since 2002. A few times a year, the job meant pulling a heavy sealing trolley. In September 2020, on a car park job at a Victorian prison, he used the trolley and reported sharp lower back pain. He resigned, returned briefly as a casual, then stopped work for good at the end of October 2020.
He lodged a WorkCover claim in April 2023. The insurer knocked it back, saying the injury did not come from his job. He challenged that decision, and the Magistrates' Court sent the medical questions to a Medical Panel - a group of independent doctors that gives binding opinions on disputed medical issues in Victorian compensation cases.
The panel backed the worker. It found his employment, and the September 2020 trolley work in particular, was a significant contributing factor to a spine condition that needed multiple surgeries.
Fulton Hogan challenged that opinion in court. Its argument was simple: the panel skipped a step the...
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