Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
A NSW Court of Appeal judge has described as “extraordinary” an award of $1.3m in damages to a child protection caseworker unable to work after she felt blamed by colleagues in a SBS documentary for the death of one of her teenage clients.
Caseworker Luiza Soulos was awarded $1,389,457 in the NSW District Court in December 2025 for the psychiatric injury she suffered after watching The Department, which looked at the work of the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) and its staff.
The DCJ secretary appealed the decision in the NSW Court of Appeal claiming that the District Court judge had erred in finding that the risk of psychiatric harm to Ms Soulos was foreseeable. The appeal was dismissed on September 7 in a unanimous decision.
In her concurring judgment, Court of Appeal president Julie Ward said the “extraordinary” award of almost $1.4m had to follow as a result of concessions in the case made by the State when it was first heard.
Justice Ward said the State had accepted that if it was reasonably foreseeable that the caseworker might identify that segment as referring to her client, and might perceive herself as the subject of criticism or blame for his death, then it was reasonably foreseeable that she would suffer psychiatric injury.
“For my own part, I consider the result (the direct product of the concession effectively made by the State as to the issue of reasonable foreseeability and the way the matter was conducted at first instance) to be extraordinary,” Justice Ward said.
“The psychiatric injury sustained was from viewing a two-minute segment of a relatively innocuous documentary … in which neither the caseworker nor her client was publicly identified.”
Justice Ward said the State was bound by the consequences of the decision to make those concession and “the court’s role is simply to adjudicate the issues contested by the parties”.
In the documentary broadcast on October 10, 2021, footage was shown from a DCJ Serious Case Review Panel discussing the death of a 17-year-old boy, known in court only as YP.
The boy, who died in May 2019, had been a client of Ms Soulos since 2017. A coroner determined he died of an accidental drug overdose.
However, the District Court found the footage from the panel discussion could have created the impression that he had died by suicide and Ms Soulos had, among other things, “really failed” him and never listened to him.
Ms Soulos went to work the day after the documentary aired, discussed it with her supervisors and never returned to work again.
The NSW District Court found that the DCJ had breached its duty of care to Ms Soulos, who suffered a psychiatric injury that left her wholly incapacitated for work when she watched the documentary and perceived that the review panel had blamed her for YP’s death.
In the September 8 appeal judgment, the court held it was “reasonably foreseeable” that Ms Soulos might perceive she was being blamed by the panel for YP’s death and she would suffer a psychiatric injury as a result.
