`beautiful Angel' Wins Battle Against Tac
The Age
Wednesday August 7, 2002
Jamie Ward-Twaites was five years old when he fell from a kerb into the path of a car. He suffered horrifying head injuries, and was left intellectually impaired.
He has been socially disadvantaged, with few friends outside school, he does not play sport and has little to occupy him beyond television, says his mother, Linda Basse.
Jamie is now 15, and a computer art program at his special school has captured and held his interest in ways nothing else has done.
But until the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal ordered the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) to cover the cost of a computer for him to use at home, the commission refused to do so.
The TAC agreed a computer would help Jamie's rehabilitation, but, in a stance it now concedes was wrong, wanted to provide only half the cost, arguing that Jamie would use the computer for leisure as well as school work.
Lawyer John Voyage, who represented Jamie, estimated the TAC spent $15,000 fighting the $1240 claim for half the computer. The point was not lost on Judge John Bowman, who heard the case.
``I could not help but note that at times the respondent commission had no fewer than three operatives in court simultaneously, and always two," Judge Bowman said.
``Compared with the $1240, which was effectively in dispute, and in relation to a seriously injured infant, the cost of defending this application seems out of all proportion.
``We are not here talking of a malingerer or an exaggerator . . . this is a claim by an entirely deserving and severely injured infant."
Judge Bowman said it was the third case he had seen recently involving severely injured young people where the TAC fought against compensation that was minimal compared with the commission's legal costs.
In one case, the commission sought to avoid covering the $150-a-year cost of ankle braces for a young man.
``The legal expenses involved in fully contesting the matter would probably have provided him with these appliances for a lifetime," Judge Bowman said.
Mr Voyage, a TAC specialist with Maurice Blackburn Cashman, said the TAC's approach to catastrophically injured road victims seemed increasingly mean-spirited and heedless of the human consequences of road injury.
He said that TAC was relying on legal technicalities for its defence despite a Court of Appeal ruling several years ago that it must not do so.
TAC spokeswoman De-Arnne Schmidt said that with hindsight, Jamie's claim should have been handled differently.
``Without going into too much detail, I think it's fair to say we made an error," Ms Schmidt said. ``We realise that in hindsight."
Ms Schmidt would not comment on what the concession of error meant for broader TAC policy. She said each case had to be assessed on merit.
Jamie, who attends Naranga special school - for children with intellectual disabilities - in Frankston, soon will no longer have to make do with a borrowed computer at home.
His art teacher, Vincent Stok, said most students at the school were not confident with hand writing. But computers, with e-mail, spelling checks and a range of fonts and text sizes, offered a way to communicate.
Computer-generated art and graphics programs offered another means of self expression.
Ms Basse said Jamie had learnt how to use the Internet, to scan pictures and to use e-mail. Despite his accident and his disability - the accident happened when he ran to cross the road to his father's car - Ms Basse said Jamie was a perfect son.
``He is loving. He is caring. He is an angel. He is just beautiful," she said.
© 2002 The Age