A checklist existed, the hazard was visible, and the employer still shared the blame
A dropped load of steel bars ended a stevedore's career - and put her employer on the hook alongside the ship's owner.
In a judgment delivered on August 11, 2026, the Supreme Court of New South Wales found both a container-ship owner and a stevedoring employer negligent after portable stowage hooks failed on a vessel berthed at Port Botany, sending heavy steel lashing bars onto a worker's lower body.
The worker had started her night shift at 9pm on August 22, 2018. Within the hour, a pair of loaded stowage hooks gave way as she walked along a walkway on the ship. The falling bars caused serious injuries to her right leg, ankle and foot, which all parties accepted. She also claimed injuries to her neck and left shoulder and psychiatric injuries, which the defendants disputed.
For HR and safety professionals, the instructive part is how the court divided responsibility. The shipowner, Pacific International Lines, had bought the new stowage hooks about 12 days before the incident, and the court found it responsible for supplying equipment that failed. The employer, Patrick Stevedores Holdings, was found responsible for a narrower lapse: it did not tell the shipowner the hooks were full or nearly full before work began. The court apportioned liability 80% to the shipowner and 20% to the employer.
That 20% is the lesson. The employer did not supply the faulty gear. Its share of the blame rested on a safety facilitator who, the court found, should have realised the stowage area would quickly fill and become overloaded - precisely the situation a pre-operations checklist was meant to catch. The court was satisfied that failure materially contributed to the collapse.
The case is a plain reminder that an employer's duty to provide a safe system of work does not disappear because someone else owns the equipment. The court described that duty as non-delegable, meaning it could not simply be passed to the shipowner, though it stressed that the real question was still whether the employer took reasonable care. Identifying and acting on a visible hazard sat with the workplace, no matter who bought the hooks.
Both defendants argued the worker shared the blame. They said she failed to keep a proper lookout, ignored an obvious risk and did not take care of her own safety. The court rejected each argument, found she had exercised reasonable care, and made no reduction to her damages for contributory negligence.
The defendants also argued the collapse was an obvious risk the worker should have been presumed to know about. The court held it was not an obvious risk, and that defence failed as well.
On damages, the court assessed non-economic loss - broadly, compensation for pain, suffering and loss of enjoyment of life - at 55% of a most extreme case and awarded $442,000. It accepted that the worker had pre-existing psychiatric conditions and a pre-existing spinal condition, and it discounted her future earnings claim to reflect those factors and a failure to mitigate her loss. The other heads of damage, including past and future economic loss, superannuation and out-of-pocket expenses, were left for the parties to calculate using the court's findings. The defendants were ordered to pay the worker's costs.
The takeaway for HR is blunt. A checklist is only worth what your people do with it. The tool existed. The hazard was visible. The gap was the failure to act on it - and that gap carried a real share of the liability.
