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Heavy awkward lifting is often a source of workplace injury particularly in materials fabrication workshops.
In a Carrara factory devoted to turning fibreglass and gravity into mining profits, Lucas Singleton found himself wrestling a 100kg fibreglass spiral that should never have been allowed to misbehave.
The spirals, used for mineral separation, were cast on heavy moulds and rested on waist-high rails. One worker was to hold the far end steady; the other twisted the spiral free.
It was just after 5.30am on a July morning in 2019.
Singleton, a 40-year-old labour hire recruit with a solid history in heavy fabrication, was teamed with a brand new co-worker.
As Singleton twisted, the spiral slipped off the rail. He went with it, hanging on as the load dropped close to a metre. The jolt tore at his lower back. He felt immediate, severe pain, yet was told by his Mineral Technologies supervisor to “be careful” and keep working.
A second similar incident followed. Only later was he driven to a GP, certified unfit, and sent down the familiar Queensland path of WorkCover, scans and, ultimately, litigation.
The injury was real, if messy. Imaging confirmed an L4/5 disc protrusion with nerve root involvement; conservative measures, nerve root block and then an L4/5 discectomy followed.
His leg pain improved but chronic back pain persisted. He developed depressive symptoms.
Singleton’s post-injury lifestyle was complicated: a string of overseas trips, enthusiastic gym routines, e-scooter mishaps, a private investigator course knocked over in four months, dubious LinkedIn puffery (including a fake engineering degree), inconsistent disclosure of medication, and strategic omissions of material history to experts would give the defence fertile ground to argue exaggeration, poor credibility and residual work capacity.
His injury claim came before Justice Paul Smith in the Supreme Court in Brisbane.
Singleton argued both his actual labour hire employer Direct Personnel Services and the host employer Direct Personnel Services Mineral Technologies had both failed at the most basic level: no safe system for a plainly hazardous manual handling task, no proper use or enforcement of engineering controls, and a culture where an obviously injured worker was told to rub on anti-inflammatory ointment and get back on the job.
DPS’s position was that “we just supply bodies, MT runs the show.”
Both sought refuge in contract clauses and in each other’s supposed primary responsibility to contend they owed no duty of care.
Not so said the judge. DPS, as employer, owed a well-established non-delegable duty to provide a safe system of work, safe plant and competent co-workers—a duty it could not contract out of by placing Singleton at MT’s site.
He reaffirmed that a labour hire employer must do more than shuffle paperwork and assume the host has things covered; it must actively satisfy itself that the host’s system is safe or take reasonable steps to ensure shortcomings are addressed.
On the facts, DPS barely cleared the bar. It relied on long-standing dealings, sporadic site visits confined behind a barrier, a historic WHS consultant’s report and blind faith in MT’s processes.
The court held that this passive stance fell short of its non-delegable duty. The risk of serious back injury from a spiral falling or from lifting it from the floor was plainly foreseeable and easily avoidable by enforcing existing engineering controls, competent pairing, proper training and clear instructions not to “just lift it back up” without assistance.
MT fared worse. As the entity with actual control of the plant, process and supervision, it owed a direct duty to take reasonable care for the safety of all workers on site, including labour hire workers performing its core production tasks.
The evidence exposed a system that looked respectable on paper—videos, SWPs, a trolley, pivot locks, collars, toolbox talks—but broke down where it mattered. The SWPs did not specifically address the known risk of a spiral slipping off the rail; there was no effective insistence on using mechanical aids or locking devices; an inexperienced worker was paired with another inexperienced worker in the early hours of the morning; and when the predictable near-miss became an actual injury, the response was to minimise, not escalate.
The judge ruled against both companies on liability but agreed there was an element of exaggeration in Singleton’s account of his incapacity and degraded earning capacity.
Both DPS and MT were held liable as concurrent tortfeasors. Judgments were entered for $433,056.28 against DPS and $490,429.05 against MT (each inclusive of the WorkCover refund) – rather than the $1.27 million Singleton had sought – with MT to contribute 75 per cent of DPS’s liability.
Singleton v Direct Personnel Services Pty Ltd & Anor (No 2) [2025] QSC 302 Smith J, 6 November 2025
Categories: Factory accident