Company skipped the hearing entirely and still got hit with a six-figure bill
On 5 August 2026, Deputy District Judge Matthew Ho ordered a Hong Kong employer to pay over HK$538,000 after a supervisor's assault injured its worker.
The Hong Kong District Court case, cited as [2026] HKDC 1434, centred on a warehouse worker who fell from a loading platform on 23 February 2017 after a physical fight with his supervisor during a shift. The worker suffered fractures to his right wrist that left him with lasting impairment. He later confined his claim to that injury alone, so the court set aside his evidence about a separate back complaint that fell outside what he chose to pursue.
The employer named in the case did not turn up. The judgment records: "The 1st Respondent was absent at trial and did not lodge any opening submissions." Satisfied it had been properly served, the judge proceeded to hear the matter without it. A second company originally joined to the case had already been let out after the worker discontinued his claim against it, with no order for costs made either way between them.
Much of the legal groundwork had already been laid in an earlier personal injury action, decided in 2025, where a different judge found the worker was employed by the respondent company rather than the second one, and awarded him damages of HK$1.87 million on a vicarious liability basis. Judge Ho held that the finding on the employment relationship was binding and could not be relitigated, adding that he would have reached the same conclusion regardless, guided by the leading Court of Final Appeal authority on employment status under the Employees' Compensation Ordinance.
With liability settled, the only question left was how much the worker was owed. Two orthopaedic experts disagreed on the extent of his permanent loss of earning capacity, one putting it at 3 percent and the other at 4.5 percent. The judge preferred the higher figure, pointing to how the injury had continued to limit the worker years on. As the judgment puts it: "Movement of his right wrist remained impaired to a certain degree." Almost six years after the accident, the court accepted he was unlikely to return to his pre-accident role given how physically demanding it was.
The final award broke down into three parts: HK$54,720.04 for loss of earning capacity, HK$456,630.19 in periodical payments covering sick leave from February 2017 to November 2019, adjusted upward in line with consumer price movements, and HK$26,789 for medical expenses. Altogether that came to HK$538,139.23, plus interest running from the date of the accident. The judge also ordered the employer to cover the worker's legal costs, including those he incurred pursuing the now-discontinued claim against the second company.
The judgment closes on a simple procedural note: "The respondent was not represented and did not appear." It is a detail that underscores how much was decided without the employer ever putting its side of the story on record.
What the judgment makes clear is that a finding on who counts as an employee in one proceeding can travel with real financial consequences into the next, and that compensation obligations under the Employees' Compensation Ordinance do not pause simply because a company chooses not to show up.
