The State of South Australia (in Right of the Department for Education) v Van Hattem (No 2)

The State of South Australia (in Right of the Department for Education) appealed to the Full Court of the Supreme Court of South Australia against a decision of the South Australian Employment Tribunal (SAET) concerning a workers' compensation claim. The respondent, an employee of the Department for Education, had claimed compensation for an adjustment disorder with depressed mood, alleging it arose from her employment. The appellant had rejected the claim, asserting the psychiatric injury was not work-related.

The central legal issue before the Full Court was the proper interpretation and application of section 7(2)(b) of the Return to Work Act 2014 (SA) (the RTW Act), which requires that for a psychiatric injury to be compensable, employment must be "the significant contributing cause" of the injury. This was contrasted with section 7(2)(a) concerning physical injuries, which requires employment to be "a significant contributing cause." The appeal also concerned whether the SAET's findings of fact had been correctly understood and applied by the Full Bench of the SAET.

The Full Court considered the evidence of medical experts, including psychiatrists who offered differing opinions on the causes of the respondent's psychiatric condition. The trial judge had interpreted "the significant contributing cause" to mean that employment must have made a greater or more significant contribution to the injury than any other single contributing cause, but not necessarily more significant than all other causes combined. The Full Court agreed with this interpretation, finding that the trial judge had correctly applied the statutory test and had made permissible findings of fact regarding the relative contributions of employment, relationship difficulties, and medication reduction to the respondent's injury. The Court concluded that employment was found to be the significant contributing cause, and therefore the appeal was dismissed.