Gang shooting a workplace accident - ACC

A company is being hit with a $1 million bill because ACC says the shooting of an employee in its carpark was a workplace accident.

Joel Storey was left paralysed from the waist down after what was believed to have been a botched gang shooting in the carpark of Wairoa's Affco freezing works on April 11 2003.

In Parliament today National Party MP Anne Tolley asked ACC Minister Ruth Dyson why the company was liable for a gang shooting.

"Can the Minister explain what is work related about someone being shot in an ongoing gang war whilst on a work break sitting in a car in a carpark?"

Ms Dyson said Affco was an accredited employer under an ACC scheme which allows employers to handle accident costs and also gives them the power to overturn their own decisions if they made a mistake. She said Affco's board of directors made the decision to give Mr Storey work related cover.

"It was their decision, they made it in April 2003, they had every opportunity under section 65 to revoke it, they never revoked it."

Ms Tolley said it was ridiculous that an employer had to pick up the bill for gang violence and she told Parliament Ms Dyson had been asked to intervene.

Ms Dyson said she received an email about the case and asked ACC for their view.

"I was told it was two days before the final decision of an agreed settlement and that they thought a settlement may be reached," she said.

"I, in my view appropriately, decided that it was not right for the Minister of ACC to intervene in what was clearly and by the legislation Affco's decision, which they decided to change their mind on when they realised how much the claim was going to cost."

However correspondence between ACC and Affco released by Ms Tolley shows ACC repeatedly told the company the injury was work related and it was liable.

In response to an Affco letter saying it was going to decline Mr Storey's application ACC workplace incentive programmes manager Alison Barnes replied on October 15, 2004 that the injury happened on work premises.

She said the company would need to supply new information that the carpark was a public carpark not a work site carpark; "before Affco could perhaps have grounds for changing its own decision to accept the claim as work-related".

However she noted there was no new information.

"Affco therefore has no basis on which to inform Joel Storey of any change to his claim status."

Ms Tolley said the Affco carpark was open to people using public park grounds and a retail butchery and was out of the secure control of the employer.

In June 2006 ACC told Affco's lawyers it was continuing to send invoices because there "has been no change in ACC's view that the claim is work-related".

And in April this year ACC confirmed its position that the "injury falls within the definition of a work related personal injury."

A spokeswoman for ACC said it would not comment as the issue was still before mediation.

She said under the Partnership Programme with ACC employers got significant levy discounts for taking responsibility for their own workplace health and safety and the management of workplace injuries. This included the delivery of all statutory entitlements, such as weekly compensation for lost earnings.

There were 155 Partnership Programme contracts covering approximately 22 per cent of the workforce.

- NZPA