The employer's own noise data undercut its expert - and its defence
The University of New South Wales must fund a former lab worker's hearing aids after failing to overturn a finding that its labs were a noisy workplace.
On July 7, 2026, the Personal Injury Commission of New South Wales dismissed the university's appeal and confirmed an earlier ruling that it was the worker's last "noisy employer" and had to pay for her hearing aids.
The worker spent about six years, from 2014 to 2020, as a laboratory assistant in a solar-research facility. She said she was surrounded by "high levels of noise" from cutting and grinding machines and had to shout to be heard. In 2024 she gave notice of injury and claimed the cost of hearing aids, estimated at $5,952.60.
Her hearing loss itself was not in dispute. The question was whether the university was the employer legally required to pay - the last workplace whose noise could have caused the loss under the state's workers compensation law.
The university, which is self-insured, knocked the claim back. It first said there was "insufficient information" tying the hearing loss to her job, then built a case of its own: two acoustic reports measuring lab noise, plus opinions from an ear, nose and throat specialist.
That evidence is what decided the matter. The university's specialist first accepted the work could have caused the loss. After reading the acoustic reports, he changed his mind and said the labs were too quiet to be the cause. The original member rejected the revised opinion, and the Presidential member on appeal agreed.
The sticking point was the readings. The specialist assumed the labs were very quiet. Yet the university's own 2014 acoustic report logged noise at levels its author warned "may still be a risk to some people," and recommended work to reduce it. The Commission found the expert's central assumption was "grossly incompatible" with the university's own data, which left his conclusion without a sound base.
For HR and safety leaders, the takeaway is not to avoid noise testing. It is that the same evidence can defend a claim or sink it. A noise assessment only helps if the expert reads it correctly; get that wrong and it becomes the other side's best exhibit.
A few practical signals stand out. Exposure claims land late - this worker left in 2020 and filed in 2024 - so noise assessments, exposure records and hearing-conservation steps need to survive for years. The decision also noted there was no pre-employment audiogram and no hearing protection. And because the university self-insures, it carried both the litigation and the payout itself.
The appeal is finished. The order that the university pay for the worker's hearing aids stands, and the original determination is confirmed.
