The County Court dismissed a workplace negligence claim by a painter who suffered an L4/5 disc prolapse while roller painting a wall, holding that the plaintiff failed to establish any breach of duty or that an alternative system of work existed that would have avoided the injury. Applying Cotton On Group Services v Golowka [2022] VSCA 279, the Court held that the plaintiff bore the burden of proving both that an alternative system was reasonable and practicable and that its implementation would have prevented the injury, and that this burden was not met where no alternative method of painting was proposed and no expert evidence addressed how measures such as provision of a trolley would have averted a spinal prolapse. The statutory breach claim under the OHS Regulations 2017 also failed on the same causation basis.
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