Former Tall Black in ACC slam dunk
A basketballer trying to rebuild his life after jail time in the US, is frustrated by compensation ‘debacle’, writes Madison Reidy.
When Konrad Ross stepped foot on New Zealand soil again in September 2013, he wanted to turn his life around.
But society looked different to the concrete block cell in a high security United States penitentiary prison, where he had spent almost seven years .
He wound up there by a string of bad choices on a visit to his hometown in Hawaii, after a sixyear stint with the New Zealand Tall Blacks in the 1990s. It was a hazy and illegal concoction of events that started with methamphetamine, and ended with him selling firearms out of the boot of the car he was living in.
The United States’ federal ‘War on Drugs’ had him locked up with murderers and gang members who would never see beyond bars. Ross described them as ‘‘the worst of the worst’’.
Now a certified personal trainer and into the third and final year of his New Zealand building apprenticeship, 47-year-old Ross has successfully reintegrated himself into society.
But none of that matters to the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC).
The Crown entity has just denied his request to receive income compensation following surgery to fix a torn ligament in his wrist. This is because he was not employed at the time a preexisting injury on the same wrist occurred in 2014, and they have accepted a dormant claim he made at that time.
Ross said the denial has made him feel as helpless as he felt locked behind bars.
He says he has had to double his antidepressant dose and move in with his mother on Auckland’s North Shore because he cannot afford to pay his rent.
Ross was deported back to New Zealand from the United States in 2013 after he served his prison sentence. He jumped on the Work and Income Jobseeker Support benefit. He wanted work.
He was exercising at a local gym when he tore the cartilage in his wrist for the first time. He filed a claim with the ACC, a specialist put it in a cast and it healed within six weeks, so he didn’t need surgery at that time.
Working on a building site recently, Ross’ same right wrist began to hurt to the point where he could not pick up his car keys. An MRI diagnosed it as an unrelated injury to the first. It was a ruptured ligament that needed urgent surgery.
Ross applied for the ACC to cover the surgery. They denied it eight weeks later.
The denial letter addressed to Ross, provided to Stuff.co.nz by ACC, said the corporation needed more time to consider his claim and would come to a decision by the end of October this year.
Ross said he and his wrist surgeon Michael Boland were shocked. So much so that Boland emailed and called ACC, asking its advisory panel to reconsider Ross’ application.
Boland’s email read: ‘‘I believe this man’s problems fulfil the requirements for consideration of surgical intervention by ACC.’’
Ross applied for a review. He told ACC that he needed it to pay for the surgery because his future employment in the trades depended on the use of his right arm.
ACC looked at his file, and a case manager called Ross early this week and told him the corporation would pay for his wrist surgery on August 21 after all. It accepted his surgery costs under his 2014 injury claim.
An ACC spokesman said its clinical advisory panel agreed to pay $12,882 for Ross’ surgery to fix the injury that was a ‘‘consequential’’ result of his 2014 injury.
He said an independent hand specialist had reviewed Ross’ surgery request, the medical notes, the radiology images and concluded that the tear was not caused by his injury at work this year.
"He considered that the tear was more longstanding and had been rendered symptomatic by the 2017 event. However, he also did not state that the 2014 injury was causative."
The spokesman said Boland made it clear that Ross’ 2017 injury was related to his 2014 injury. Ross said this was not accurate and Boland had deemed the two injuries, on opposite sides of his wrist, separate.
Ross said it made no sense but he was thankful that this now tenweek-long debacle would end and he could get his life back on track after surgery. He cancelled his review for this year’s claim.
On Wednesday, ACC called him again. This time it was bad news – it could not compensate his income for the six-week recovery period after his operation, because he was not employed at the time of the 2014 claim that he made only a few months after leaving prison.
ACC guidelines state that an applicant is eligible to be compensated for 80 per cent of their income while injured and out of work if they have an ‘unusual working situation’.
Schmidt & Peart Law is a firm which specialises in ACC disputes. One of its partners, Philip Schmidt, said being an ex-prisoner seeking employment would not qualify as an unusual situation under the ACC’s scheme.
He said that was unfair and the New Zealand Law Society and the ACC itself had called for changes to the legislation stating that a person must be working at the time of the injury to receive compensation.
‘‘Legislation changes at the ACC are notoriously slow. The ministers involved have really sat on their hands.’’
Schmidt said what was striking about Ross’ case was that ACC’s medical panel had directly opposed the surgeon’s professional opinion.
Because Ross had been working in a physically demanding environment for three years, the early wrist injury would have healed significantly and it was unlikely that it caused the recent injury, he said.
Schmidt said Ross had a ‘‘pretty good chance’’ of succeeding at an independent hearing review.
Ross already pulled his review the day before he was told he would not be compensated during rehabilitation.
The ACC spokesman said it did not notify Ross of the changes to his compensation earlier, because it was unaware he had come off a Work and Income benefit. But ACC had been compensating Ross while he had been unable to work in recent weeks.
Ross said he did not want to file another review because he had lost faith in the Government’s accident compensation system.
The ACC debacle had been his most trying experience since he arrived back in New Zealand.
‘‘It is just frustrating having these people make decisions that can have such a direct impact on your life and that you cannot comprehend why and how such decisions were reached.
‘‘It is like I have taken one step forward and two steps back.’’
‘It is like I have taken one step forward and two steps back.’ Konrad Ross.