THE owners of the Wambo Coal Mine near Singleton will have to pay a worker who fell 2.5 metres from a dumptruck $1.2 million after they lost their appeal against the payout yesterday.
Roche Mining was ordered last September to pay casual employee Graeme Jeffs $1.2 million plus costs after he fell backwards from the 50-tonne truck while climbing up to the cabin in 2003.
Roche appealed against that ruling, but three justices of the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal.
Mr Jeffs, formerly of Muswellbrook, was unable to work after the fall despite making a number of attempts to return to work, the Supreme Court previously heard.
He was flown to John Hunter Hospital after the fall, but was discharged the following day after no serious injuries were detected.
It wasn't until he underwent further diagnosis to find the cause of extreme pain in his back that fractures to his pelvis were found.
The Supreme Court judge said the method for entering the truck was dangerous and foreseeable, but Roche argued that they did not breach their duty of care and there were no other reports of similar falls before Mr Jeff's accident.
Mr Jeffs endured financial hardship after the fall, resulting in his wife returning to work and their family moving back to Queensland, the court previously heard.
"[The Supreme Court judge] concluded that the accident was caused both by the design fault in the access to the driver's cabin and Roche's failure to devise a safe system of work to obviate the risk to which it exposed drivers such as [Mr Jeffs]," Justice Ruth McColl said yesterday.
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