The NT Court of Appeal held that when an employer pleads a course of management action as a defence under s 3A(2) of the Return to Work Act, the Work Health Court must assess the objective reasonableness of the totality of that management action, and cannot determine the entire course unreasonable based solely on a finding that one early step was flawed. The Court confirmed that an employer's knowledge of a worker's pre-existing mental health vulnerabilities is not relevant to assessing whether management action was taken on reasonable grounds and in a reasonable manner, as importing common law duty of care concepts into the s 3A(2) assessment would undermine the statutory purpose of insulating reasonable management action from workers' compensation liability. While the Court found the Supreme Court erred in criticising the Work Health Court's use of the worker's 'perception' of hostile management (which was a correct approach to establishing the threshold injury under s 3A(1)), this error did not affect the correctness of the Supreme Court's ultimate order remitting the matter given the other identified errors of law.
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