$585k for work bashing

Burleigh firm failed to protect butcher, court rules

A BUTCHER who was bashed at work has been awarded more than $500,000 because his boss didn’t separate him from a co-worker he described as a “ticking time bomb”.

Jamie William Colwell was awarded $584,995 when District Court Judge David Kent ruled Top Cuts at Burleigh Heads was negligent for not separating him from the coworker, Warren Parks.

Court documents reveal the company was warned four times there could be a fight between the two men.

Judge Kent wrote in his decision, handed down in Brisbane on June 27, that on January 20, 2014, “Mr Parks attacked (Mr Colwell), initially from behind, punching him numerous times in the back of the head and the face until he was physically restrained by two co-workers”.

Parks was dismissed. He later pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to six months jail wholly suspended, 150 hours community service and 18 months probation.

Mr Colwell took Top Cuts to court for breaching its duty of care. Judge Kent ruled that Top Cuts had been warned, knew about Parks’ violent history, should have foreseen Mr Colwell was at risk, and failed in its duty of care by not separating the men.

“I guess I won but it doesn’t feel like that,” Mr Colwell told the Bulletin yesterday. “For four years I have been living through the hardship and getting through the physical and mental struggles from it all.”

At least a month before he was assaulted, Mr Colwell warned Top Cuts management that he feared for his safety when working back-to-back with Parks in the lamb section.

“He said words to the effect of ‘he’s killed somebody, he’s crying over his cutting bench, he’s shaking uncontrollably because of his carpel tunnel syndrome’,” Judge Kent wrote in his decision.

He wrote that Mr Colwell had also said: “I said it’s only, you know, it’s a ticking time bomb, just like everyone else said in the crew.”

Parks gave evidence that he had also asked be moved away from Mr Colwell.

“Mr Parks said in crossexamination that (Mr Colwell) was ‘getting to me’ and this was the context of the discussion where he said to (his manager) that (he) needed to get Mr Colwell away from him – ‘you need to move me’,” Judge Kent’s decision reads.

The decision document revealed Parks gave evidence that he had previously served a three-and-a-half year prison sentence in the UK for assault occasioning bodily harm, had been sacked from previous jobs for aggressive behaviour and was dismissed from Top Cuts in the 1990s for a verbal altercation. He was re-employed by Top Cuts when he returned from the UK.

Top Cuts argued that it could not have foreseen there would be an assault, there was no evidence Parks had been violent in the workplace, and managers did not know what he was convicted for in the UK.

However, Judge Kent found that one manager would have been aware of his previous conviction and after two complaints and an argument days before the assault, they should have foreseen it.

Mr Colwell was awarded $153,850 for past economic losses, $291,260 for future economic loses, $60,000 in general damages and smaller figures for other damages, totalling $584,995.09.

Queensland Law Society deputy president Bill Potts said people should be aware that fights in the workplace could go well beyond just a court appearance.

“Just like one punch can kill, one punch can cost hundreds of thousands as well,” Mr Potts said.