He worked just 21 days before the fall, yet the absent employer still had to pay
A teenage labourer who worked barely a month before a fall won over HK$312,000 on 22 June 2026, Deputy District Judge Ebony Ling ruled.
The case arose from an accident on 15 September 2023, when the worker, employed by a logistics company as a labourer, slipped and fell from the top of a cargo and injured his back.
He had started with the company on 16 August 2023, less than a month before the fall. He was paid in cash at a daily rate of HK$1,300, and by the date of the accident he had worked 21 days. The judge accepted that, but for the accident, he would have completed 22 working days in his first month. That produced monthly earnings of HK$28,600 for the purposes of the Employees' Compensation Ordinance.
The worker brought his claim under sections 9, 10 and 10A of the Ordinance. The employer never engaged. It took no part in the proceedings, and interlocutory judgment was entered against it on 25 July 2025. A second respondent had been dropped from the action earlier that year. What remained for the court was simply to assess how much the absent employer owed.
Two pieces of evidence carried the assessment. First, a compensation board had certified the worker's permanent loss of earning capacity at 0.5% and confirmed that 416 days of sick leave were necessary because of the injury. Under the Ordinance, that certificate "shall be evidence of the matters stated therein," meaning the court could rely on it without hearing from the doctors. Second, the company's own representative, in a cautioned statement to the Labour Department in December 2023, had accepted both the length of the worker's employment and his daily wage.
The worker gave evidence himself and called no other witness. The judge found him "a credible and reliable witness," noting his account matched the contemporaneous documents.
The numbers followed the statutory formulas. Because the worker was 19 at the time of the accident, his permanent injury was assessed across 96 months of earnings, yielding about HK$13,700 under section 9. The 416 days of sick leave, paid at four-fifths of earnings, came to roughly HK$317,000 under section 10. The court allowed a further HK$2,000 in medical expenses under section 10A, accepting the worker's account of a three-day hospital stay and follow-up sessions even though he had kept no receipts.
The total came to about HK$333,000. The company had already paid an advance of HK$20,000 in December 2023, which the court deducted, leaving a net award of just under HK$313,000. The worker was also awarded interest running from the date of the accident, and the court ordered the company to pay his costs.
On the judge's assessment, neither the worker's short service nor the employer's absence reduced what was owed. The certified medical finding fixed his loss of earning capacity, the proven daily wage set the monthly figure, and the statutory formulas produced a sum the worker recovered in full but for the advance the company had already paid.
