Our client was a 46-year-old married man who worked as a School Learning Support Officer. He worked with young offenders and enjoyed teaching them boxing and guitar in addition to the normal duties with his role.
While working, our client began experiencing increasing intensity of problems with staff members. He experienced bullying, harassment, intimidation, ostracism, and victimisation by fellow staff members which ultimately led to unsafe working conditions where multiple instances of violent acts towards our client by students at the school were sanctioned and even encouraged by staff. Our client reported these incidents to his superiors; however, no actions were taken to address the issues.
Our client ended up lodging a Workers Compensation claim for psychological injuries and his claim was accepted by the Workers Compensation insurer. He was unable to return to work and his mental state deteriorated further. It was at this time that he sought the assistance of our expert personal injury lawyers with respect to a Work Injury Damages claim.
During the investigation of the Work Injury Damages claim, our experienced team members discussed with our client the possibility of pursuing a claim for a Total and Permanent Disability benefit.
Total and Permanent Disability insurance is a benefit often provided in life-insurance policies as well as within superannuation plans. A request from his superannuation fund was sent through and upon receipt of the policies, our lawyers reviewed the policy definitions which allowed us to determine that our client was eligible to lodge a Total and Permanent Disability claim.
The definition to qualify for Total and Permanent Disability varies from policy to policy but generally the client is required, because of injury or illness, to be absent from all employment for 6 consecutive months and be incapacitated to such extent that it is unlikely they will ever again engage in employment (either on a full time or part time basis) for which they are reasonably qualified by reason of education, training, or experience.
The Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) claim usually involves the completion and lodgement of the following:
- member claim form,
- medical attendant statements from the treating medical practitioners,
- employer statement from the client’s last employer, and
- employment and education history.
While completing and compiling the above, our experienced team members requested:
- all relevant medical records, reports, and documents from all treating medical practitioners to support our client’s claim,
- taxation records from prior to the date of incapacity to the present time,
The information was reviewed, compiled, and a claim was lodged with the superannuation. The superannuation reviewed the documents supplied and an initial assessment was performed by the superannuation prior to it being sent to their trustee for approval.