By Gaby Grammeno Contributor

The malevolent conduct of someone who fabricated an email in a worker’s name during a dispute with her employer, making out she was a racist engaged in deceitful misuse of her position, wrecked her career.  

The worker was employed as a risk manager by a shire council in northern Queensland. The email was used by the director of a local cruise business to encourage the council to settle a debt proceeding the council had instituted against it. 

The email purported to be an internal email the risk manager sent her employer. It falsely portrayed her as misusing her position to prevent a local aboriginal corporation from assuming control of the lease of a failed waterfront cruise business which owed rent and rates to the council. 

It contained racist slurs – ‘It was bad enough that we had to hand over the housing to the dirty bastards we don’t want them down there’ and assured the recipient that the matter would be ‘handled with discretion’ and ‘kept secure’, implying secrecy.  

It was clearly established that the email was a fabrication, as it did not exist in council’s email system and there were a substantial number of other indicators that it was not genuine. But regrettably, council failed to clearly explain this to relevant parties or demonstrate that the email was not written by its employee. 

This failure raised the risk of the email being broadcast to the public, perpetuating the false impression that the worker was its author. 

The fake email was deployed in a debt claim and eventually tabled in Parliament by a state MP. This public demolition of her character had a devastating psychological impact on the worker, resulting in a lasting psychiatric injury that left her unable to do work of any sort. 

She sued her employer in negligence and the case was heard in the Queensland Supreme Court. 

 

In court 

The worker alleged that the council had failed to avoid the perpetuation of the fabricated email in the public domain, and that in doing so it had breached its duty of care to avoid the foreseeable risk of psychiatric injury to her.  

The council argued that its duty of care cannot extend to guarding against risks of employee injury posed by the conduct of third parties beyond its control.  

The council’s submission was that even if it was wrong about not owing the worker a duty of care, it denied any breach or that it caused the injury or that the injury was foreseeable. 

The court’s task was to determine whether the council owed the worker a duty of care, given that the injury resulted from the conduct of third parties outside the council’s control, and whether it breached that duty. 

It also had to determine whether there was a reasonably foreseeable risk before the document was tabled that the worker would suffer a psychiatric injury from the perpetuation of the email in the public domain. 

Supreme Court Judge James Henry heard evidence regarding the context surrounding the fabricated email’s emergence, how council responded to it, and how its tabling in parliament was a necessary cause of her injury. 

He noted that the fabricated email’s content was inconsistent with evidence of the worker’s demonstrated professionalism and empathy towards the Indigenous community in her work on behalf of council and in her studies. She described the email as ‘shattering’ and said she could hardly bear to read it, let alone believe it was being used in legal proceedings. 

Council’s former CEO testified that he’d had ‘quite [a] few conversations with staff who were upset about being targeted by the [local shire residents and ratepayers] Association’, which reportedly had a ‘toxic and aggressive’ attitude to the council. However, the council’s practice was to advise staff to put personal comments to one side and focus on the issues raised. 

Justice Henry said that ‘that approach – “don’t engage, keep calm and carry on” – may be apt to some interactions between employees of a bureaucracy and irate members of the public’, but that ‘it was not an apt response in the extreme circumstances of this case’. 

He formed the view that though the council had no control over the MP’s decision to table it, there may have been steps council could and should have taken earlier, to make it unlikely that those relying on the fabricated email would have persisted, in turn making it unlikely the fabricated email would have been provided to and tabled by the MP, and a link to it placed on the Association’s Facebook page. 

In particular, the council should have taken steps to reveal the facts demonstrating the falsity of the fabricated email to the director of the cruise business, and to the CEO of the local aboriginal corporation. If those steps had been taken, the fabricated email would not have been perpetuated in the public domain. 

The worker testified as to the impact this had on her.  

‘They... took my life. They took what I was – what I’d studied for and the person that I was in the community... they just turned me into a different person,’ she said. 

She was extremely distressed, feeling it as ‘a global humiliation that was permanently on the record that could never be undone with no substantiation and no right to reply’. 

After some attempts to resume her employment, it was apparent that she was unable to continue working at the council. From January 2021 her inability to work in any capacity was medically certified, and her employment was terminated. 

A consultant psychiatrist testified that the tabling of the forged email in Parliament triggered the development of a major depressive order with anxious distress in the worker.  

Council submitted that as far as it knew, the worker was a high functioning employee who exhibited no signs of ongoing distress after her initially expressed upset on learning of the fabricated email, and that it was not foreseeable that its perpetuation would cause psychiatric injury. 

However, Justice Henry expressed the view that council knew or ought to have known that the public dissemination of the email would have a devastating impact on the worker, and that it would be aggravated by the ‘excruciating injustice’ of the email’s import in the circumstances, amounting to a foreseeable risk of psychiatric injury. 

In failing to take the appropriate action, council had breached its duty of care to the worker, and that breach was the cause of the injury. But for Council’s negligence, the worker would not have suffered the injury, therefore, council was liable for the consequences. 

Justice Henry awarded the former risk manager $901,697 and $1,436,125 for past and future economic loss plus interest, and smaller sums for general damages and other matters, totalling $2,359,037.64. 

 

What it means for employers 

The risk of psychiatric injury is increasingly being recognised by work health and safety regulators and by the courts. This case highlights the importance of employers addressing foreseeable risks to safeguard the psychosocial wellbeing of their workers. 

 

Read the judgment 

Habermann v Cook Shire Council [2025] QSC 214