$1.3 million for lifting 11kg: Massive Bunnings damages payout

Bunnings has been ordered to pay a former worker AUD$1.25 million ($1.32m) after she was seriously injured lifting a bucket of fertiliser.

The massive payout to 31-year-old Australian woman Sarah Jane was the final result of a long-running case that ended in the New South Wales Supreme Court, news.com.au reports.

Jane was working as a merchandiser for fertiliser brand Neutrog at the Seven Hills branch of Bunnings in 2018 when she incurred the injury.

She knelt down to lift and drag forward a bucket to the front of a pallet at the Sydney store when she says her life changed forever.

The movement caused a severe injury that Jane says she still suffers from.

Bunnings agreed to pay AUD$750,000 plus estimated legal costs of AUD$500,00 and the fertiliser manufacturer, Neutrog, has also been ordered to contribute.

Jane’s lawyer Luke Power told news.com.au the settlement was a “win for the little guy” and said Bunnings had battled his client until very recently.

“This has been incredibly stressful for her, and it was fought tooth and nail.”

The settlement found that Bunnings “knew or ought to have known” the risk of not training Jane to use a pallet jack, and the use of one could have prevented her injury.

Neutrog's Sudden Impact fertiliser.

Bunnings workers regularly use them but she was not given an indication of their availability when she received her training via a Bunnings module.

“Bunnings owed a duty to merchandisers attending the Bunnings stores to ensure that the merchandisers were advised of the specialised work procedure including the pallet jack procedure,” court documents cited by news.com.au stated.

“Bunnings devised, controlled and regulated the prevailing system of work for its own employees, but did not apply the same rigour or adopt the same precautions for the merchandisers, who were nonetheless subject to Bunnings control and oversight.”

Each bucket of the Sudden Impact fertiliser weighed between 10.8kg and 11.2kg.

Jane told news.com.au the legal victory did not feel like a win.

“Not just everything that they’ve put me through, but just the injury itself, and how much it’s changed my life and how much I’ve missed out on with my kids when they were young.”

Australia’s lack of an ACC-style system means that Jane’s case is not unique.

In 2018, Bunnings compensated a customer who slipped on onion from the chain’s popular sausage sizzles.

The man, a farmer named only as Trevor, signed a non-disclosure agreement after coming to terms with the retail giant for an injury he suffered at the Gympie branch in 2015.

He pursued a case based on the emotional stress he suffered.

“I went to another Bunnings a couple of weeks after and I had a panic attack,” he told the ABC at the time.

“Every time I go into Bunnings now I look on the floor — I look for onions.”

Bunnings' popular sausage sizzles are facing a snag - all because one Australian man slipped on an onion.

His case also saw Bunnings order its stores in Australia and New Zealand to mandate that the onions go under the sausages, to avoid further slippage.

Less successful was an attempt by Russian refugee Olga Day to sue Woolworths after an alleged in-store accident.

Day said she slipped on a shallot in Orion Springfield Central Woolworths near Ipswich in 2014 because she was distracted when an in-store demonstrator promoted a constipation aid.

She wanted $1.3m, the huge claim being described by media at the time as “shallot of money”.

A judge later threw out the case, labelling it “baseless”.