EXCLUSIVE
A businessman has been awarded $1 million in compensation after being blinded in one eye when a hose hit him in the face while emptying a storm drain.
Leigh Bilson, 47, was working for Vatsonic Contracting Services on a job for Townsville City Council in north-east Queensland when he was injured on 28 August 2017.
Mr Bilson had been with the company for nine months and was operating a vacuum truck to help council workers suck water out of a well so they could clear silt from the drain.
But during the process, the 11.5-metre hose “violently” slipped from his hands and flew upwards, hitting him on the bridge of his nose and breaking his left eye.
Mr Bilson has taken legal action against Vatsonic PTY LTD and Townsville City Council, arguing that his employer breached its duty of care.
He claimed his injury occurred because council workers ignored his instructions on how to handle the hose during the draining process.
In April, Townsville District Court Judge John Coker ruled in Bilson’s favour and ordered Vatsonic, who he found 70 per cent responsible for the incident, to pay $359,689.
Leigh Bilson, 47 (pictured), was left blind in one eye after a workplace accident in 2017.
The judge also found Townsville City Council was 30 per cent responsible for the incident, but ruled it should not have to pay compensation because it was compensated for damages under its contract with Vatsonic.
The council launched a bizarre appeal against that decision, arguing it should not have been held liable at all, but lost and has now been ordered to pay $590,801.
And according to the revised decision released this week, Mr. Bilson has now been awarded a total of $950,490.
According to court documents, Mr. Bilson was hired by Vatsonic as a vacuum truck operator in June 2016 and was taken out by another employee on his first day to show him how the truck worked.
The truck had a large tank at the back with two connecting valves: an inlet to which the hose was connected for suction purposes and an outlet to drain the tank.
At the time of the accident, Mr Bilson was on his sixth day of work cleaning a 4.2-metre-deep stormwater pit in Burdell, in the north-west of the city.
He was working alongside three council workers, equipped with a crane, who were tasked with lifting and removing the hose from the drain.
Mr Bilson’s job was to unfold the hose in preparation for drainage, empty the tank and switch the hose between the two connecting valves as required.
Each time the tank was filled with water, the hose had to be pulled out of the well and laid on the ground to allow Mr Bilson to unhook it from its end and move it back to the inlet valve to repeat the process.
Pictured: One of the vacuum trucks operated by Vatsonic Contracting Services
According to Mr Bilson’s testimony in court, he had informed council workers about this requirement and the group had been using this “informal operating system” to successfully fill and empty the tank “eight to ten times a day”.
However, on the day of the accident, Mr Bilson went to disconnect the hose from the outlet valve, but the pipe experienced a burst of energy.
“It was a bit tight. I moved it a bit and it slipped out of my hand, did a 180-degree turn and landed on the bridge of my nose and my eye,” Bilson told the court.
Mr Bilson told the court he called his boss and wife to tell them what had happened and saw the other end of the hose was on the crane hanging about four metres in the air, dangling over the shaft.
Judge Coker ruled that Vatsonic had breached its duty of care by failing to carry out a risk assessment and prepare a safe method of working statement, outlining the safe operating procedure not only for Mr Bilson but also for council workers.
He said the incident was ultimately caused by council workers failing to follow Mr Bilson’s instructions, but said that would not have happened if Vatsonic had prepared a safety plan.
Judge Coker described Mr Bilson as an “impressive” and “stoic” man who “moved on with his life” after the incident.
Pictured: A similar drainage procedure performed by Vatsonic in an unrelated work in 2018
She found that the injury had prevented Mr Bilson from seeking better-paid work in the mining industry, but that otherwise his injury had not interfered with his “family and social life”.
“For all intents and purposes, (he) has no vision in his left eye except, as he described, (being able) to see a faint shadow if there is a bright light,” the court documents read.
‘Mr Bilson suffered a rupture of his left eye, traumatic loss of the iris and traumatic loss of the lens. There is a risk that he may develop sympathetic ophthalmia, which can threaten the vision in his right eye, although the risk is low.
‘(He) also described suffering from burning and throbbing in his left eye, leading to headaches that he treats with over-the-counter medications.
‘While there is no chance of restoring sight, Mr Bilson’s treating specialist has identified a number of possible future surgical treatments to ‘alleviate the pain’.
The initial decision was also appealed by Bilson and Vatsonic, who argued that Judge Coker was wrong in not ordering the council to pay damages.
Vatsonic further appealed that the council should have been given 100 per cent blame for the accident, but his claim was rejected.
The appeal court ordered that Vatsonic and the council could negotiate what percentage of the total costs each should pay, and that the parties had seven days to submit further arguments.