Payout for fall that stopped woman fleeing rapist
A Taiwanese woman has been awarded A$240,000 (HK$1.56 million) in compensation from an Australian rail firm after a judge ruled that the broken ankle she suffered on a train station's steps prevented her escaping a rapist weeks later.
RailCorp said yesterday it planned to appeal against the District Court decision, which was made on April 4 but only became public knowledge after a report in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday.
'We have concerns that there are inconsistencies in the judgment and we are going to appeal,' a RailCorp spokesman said, adding that to the best of his knowledge the case was unprecedented in RailCorp's experience.
The 36-year-old woman, a television reporter from Taiwan who was in Sydney studying English, broke her ankle when she slipped on wet stairs at Sydenham railway station in 2002.
A few weeks later she was beaten and raped by a male acquaintance at his home. Her lawyers successfully argued before Judge John Goldring that had she not been on crutches with her foot in plaster, she would have been able to escape the attack.
Steps leading down to the station platform were dangerous when wet, an engineer's investigation found. A yellow stripe on the edge of the stairs designed to make them more visible had been covered in a paint which made them slippery.
The court was told that paint with anti-slip grit in it should have been used instead.
After the sexual assault the woman became depressed, found it hard to socialise and her hair suddenly turned grey.
Judge Goldring ruled that she would not have been raped had she been fully mobile. He said the ankle injury and subsequent sexual assault were 'within the scope' of RailCorp's responsibility.
He awarded Ms Chu A$239,405 for her injury, medical expenses, and lost wages.
'This pushes the boundaries in terms of causation,' said Regina Graycar, a professor of law at the University of Sydney.
'But it's not as unusual as you might think. The question is, how far do you take it down the line? There was a case in Britain where a man had a road accident and suffered brain damage. He subsequently raped two women. He sued the driver of the car for damages - for turning him into a rapist - and he won.'
