June 2020

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Court debates life expectancy for crash victim’s compensation


by Resolve editor Kate Tilley

A helicopter company has been ordered to pay a pilot more than $5.6 million in damages after he was severely injured in a crash in Papua New Guinea.

Qld Supreme Court Justice James Henry, sitting in Cairns, had earlier found Hevilift Ltd liable for injuries to Bruce Towers when the chopper he was piloting crashed on 20 April 2006, killing three of the six passengers and seriously injuring Mr Towers.

The latest judgement followed an initial trial in 2016 to determine liability and Hevilift’s unsuccessful subsequent appeal in 2018.

Justice Henry assessed damages at $5,652,072.74.

The crash occurred in the PNG highlands after the helicopter became enveloped in cloud. Mr Towers became an incomplete quadriplegic.

Justice Henry said many aspects of the quantum assessment had been agreed between the parties. His role was to determine Mr Towers’ life expectancy; economic loss; and household maintenance costs.

He agreed with medical evidence from Dr Peter McCombe that Mr Towers’ life expectancy was “materially less” than the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimate of 16.7 years, but rejected his opinion it was 9.8 years “because of extra risk, over and above the average risk posed by Mr Towers’ underlying tetraplegia”.

Justice Henry determined 15 years was appropriate.

He said Dr McCombe did not examine Mr Towers. “Nor did he conduct any inquiry into the multifactorial aspects of Mr Towers’ health and resilience which may bear in positive as well as negative ways upon his likely life expectancy.”

He said the fact Mr Towers suffered his spinal cord injury (SCI) in April 2006 and was still alive, despite the injury, “bespeaks a strong degree of resilience. The standard mortality ratio decreases as sufferers of SCI draw proportionately closer to the life expectancy of a member of the general populous.

“Mr Towers is 69. His advanced age and the resilience he has demonstrated since being injured 16 years ago tells against a more significant reduction of his life expectancy.”

Justice Henry said Mr Towers’ SCI left him permanently incapacitated for work as a helicopter pilot. He had been on a one-month-on, one-month-off work cycle with Hevilift under a three-year contract. He intended, in the off-work months, to also generate income from work for companies he owned, Towers Lighting Company Pty Ltd and Highlights Australia Pty Ltd, film and television lighting businesses. However, since his injury, both businesses had closed.

Justice Henry said his “strong impression on the whole of the evidence is that Mr Towers was a competent rather than outstanding helicopter pilot”.

He said it was “most unlikely he would have chosen to remain working with Hevilift until he retired. He had worked for an array of different employers in the preceding 15 years. The notion he would have chosen to stay with Hevilift for at least the next decade is contrary to that past pattern of variability”.

Mr Towers’ work involved travelling to and from Victoria to PNG, where he stayed in workers’ accommodation, which was sometimes tents or camps.

“It is doubtful such a working lifestyle would have held long-term appeal to a man already well into his fifties.”

Justice Henry assessed Mr Towers’ economic loss on the basis he would have worked for Hevilift for three years and then worked in Australia as a helicopter pilot until he retired.

“I do not overlook Mr Towers’ professed fondness of PNG, the home of his youth and the country in which he had long ago flown fixed-wing aircraft and done some parachuting. However, he had not worked there in any of his preceding 15-year career as a helicopter pilot,” Justice Henry said.

“It is difficult to avoid the impression Mr Towers took the job with Hevilift not because he longed for a fly-in fly-out career in PNG, but because it was a relatively well paid job in which he could accumulate further experience.”

Justice Henry concluded Mr Towers would likely retire at the age of 68 and assessed lost income at $614,636.04.

His final tally also included interest, lost superannuation and an allowance for cleaning, mowing and gardening services that Mr Towers could no longer perform.

• Towers v Hevilift Ltd (No 2) [2020] QSC 77 (15 April 2020)
• Hevilift Ltd v Towers [2018] QCA 89 (11 May 2018)
• Towers v Hevilift Ltd & Anor [2016] QSC 267 (17 November 2016)

 

 
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