A recent decision of the Brisbane District Court, McHugh V BKE Pty Ltd as trustee for the BW King Family Trust [2018] QDC 254 has highlighted the need for the owners and managers of rural properties to make safety modifications to quad bikes to avoid the risk of injury to their workers and the consequential pain of significant adverse damages awards against them.
Andrew McHugh worked on a cattle property outside Gympie in Queensland. The work involved him using a quad bike which was provided to him by the owner of the property.
McHugh was using a quad bike to muster cattle. He was working with the cattle going down a slope when the quad bike began to overturn. He instinctively put out his right leg to stop the quad bike from overturning and suffered serious injuries in the consequential rollover.
The parties to the subsequent litigation brought by McHugh agreed that the injury and loss suffered by McHugh because of the incident were significant and agreed that, if totally successful, McHugh should receive damages of $500,000.
Once the judge accepted that McHugh was authorised to use the quad bike for his work, the primary issue for the judge to determine was whether there had been a failure to provide safe equipment to allow McHugh to carry out his work.
At the trial, McHugh’s lawyers relied upon evidence they had obtained from two engineers, Roger Kahler and Ricky Blom. In the reports the engineers suggested that the injury could have been avoided by retro-fitting to the quad bike a crash protection system and a lap seatbelt which would have cost in the order of $600-$700. Alternatively, they suggested that as an alternative to using a quad bike, a 2-seat utility vehicle, somewhat like a golf buggy, could been provided to McHugh which could have been obtained at a reasonable price second-hand.
The engineering evidence was that on sloping land the quad bike could easily overturn and that was exactly what happened. The contours of the slopes of the land at where the accident occurred were some 40 degrees – the evidence of Mr Kahler was that the quad bike was at risk of overturning when used on a slope on an angle of as little as 14 degrees.
The judge found that if the quad bike had been fitted with rollover protection and a lap safety belt Mr McHugh would not have needed to put his leg out to protect himself in the rollover accident and it is more likely than not that he would not have suffered a serious injury in the rollover.
The judge also found that the provision of a 2-seat utility vehicle would have been a safe and practical alternative to the quad bike.
He further found that Mr McHugh should have taken great care for his own safety upon the day considering his knowledge of the land and his experience with quad bikes and reduced his damages by 20% leading to an award of damages in his favour of $400,000.
Individual liability limited by a scheme approved under professional standards legislation (personal injury work exempted).