colinnew
The South Australian Employment Tribunal has found that employers who mandated their staff to take the COVID-19 vaccines can be held liable for injuries caused. The ruling implies that employers will no longer be able to claim that they are protected from compensation because they were complying with a lawful state government directive.
Youth support worker Daniel Shepherd won an appeal against the state of South Australia after it had rejected his claim for compensation following a diagnosis of vaccine-induced pericarditis, a heart condition, which he contracted from a third dose of the COVID-19 jabs. Reception of the vaccine had been mandated by his employer, the Department of Child Protection (DCP).
The DCP admitted that the vaccine caused the pericarditis but said that the injection did not “arise from employment but from a lawful State Government vaccination directive.” The DCP argued that the government was solely to blame.
READ: Trudeau gov’t budgeted $198 million to enforce COVID mandates on federal employees
The tribunal disagreed. It found that the injury arose “as a result of both [the government’s] vaccination mandate and the applicant’s employment.” Employment, the tribunal said, does not have to be the “only or most significant cause”; it is only necessary that it be a “significant contributing cause of a work injury.” The implication is that employers cannot shift the blame; they too are responsible.
Shepherd is incapacitated and unable to conduct normal duties. It is a story tragically common in the Australian work force, which was subjected to punishing vaccine mandates that forced many reluctant workers to choose between their health and their livelihood.
Shepherd experienced adverse events following his first two inoculations and was unwilling to take the risk of a further dose, but he was told by his supervisor that he must receive a third jab within four months of his second as a condition of his employment.
Shepherd complied, but a day later began to experience severe chest pains. For two weeks, the pains got worse until eventually they became unbearable. He likened it to someone kneeling on his chest. Ultimately, he was taken by ambulance to the Ashford Hospital cardiac unit where cardiologists told him that he had pericarditis, probably related to his third COVID jab.
It comes as no surprise that employers have been exposed to legal risks. State governments passed off enforcement of the mandates to managers in work places, threatening them with harsh financial penalties if they did not comply.
This had the effect of dividing the work place into those who were willing to comply with taking an experimental drug, which has since been shown to be dangerous and ineffective, and those who were punished or fired for wanting to make their own health decisions. It also put employers into the position of overseeing health decisions, for which they usually had no training.
While the tribunal’s finding seems to open the door to further legal action against employers, including private businesses, any large-scale compensation may prove difficult to achieve. The DCP accepted that Shepherd had been injured by the vaccine. Businesses are unlikely to make similar admissions, given the potential sums involved.
There is overwhelming aggregate statistical evidence that the COVID vaccines caused widespread harms, especially heart conditions including pericarditis and myocarditis, and even death. But with any individual case of injury there will always be the possibility to raise doubts about the aetiology. “How do you know it was the vaccine? Maybe it was something in your medical history. Prove it.” That could be the approach of employers’ lawyers.
READ: Russell Brand: God is directing a global ‘awakening’ in response to growing authoritarianism
This will mean expert opinion will be required to show that the COVID shots were the cause of injuries. Shepherd received expert support from a cardiologist, Dr. Peter Waddy, but such opinions may prove difficult to elicit, given that Australia’s medical community is being subjected to threats by government authorities, who are scrambling to cover up what could turn out to be the greatest medical disaster in the nation’s history.
Kara Thomas, secretary of the Australian Medical Professionals Society, argues that censorship and coercion of medical professionals is now rampant:
Many doctors expressing concerns about COVID mRNA vaccine safety and efficacy faced severe punishment for causing vaccine hesitancy and undermining government public health messaging. Despite evidence vindicating their concerns, the Medical Board declined discussion, focusing solely on requiring practitioners to avoid contradicting the government. Medical regulation now appears designed to control the thoughts and speech of Australia’s 850,000 Health Professionals.
In such a coercive environment, it will not be easy to find doctors courageous enough to support victims in court.
