Dr Renuka Visvanathan’s $115,000 compensation bullying payout overturned in appeal ruling

A senior Adelaide doctor awarded compensation after a tribunal held she was the target of bullying and discrimination has had her legal victory dashed.

Head of QEH geriatrics Renuka Visvanathan sued SA Health over alleged bullying and being passed over for a job. Her initial victory has now been overturned on appeal. Picture: Morgan Sette

A senior doctor awarded $115,000 compensation after a tribunal found she had been the target of workplace bullying has had her legal victory overturned.

Dr Renuka Visvanathan told the SA Employment Tribunal that her time working for the Central Adelaide Local Health Network had been a “nightmare”.

The tribunal heard claims she had been the subject of bias at work and was frozen out of meetings, while a supervisor secretly recorded a private conversation between the pair.

In a landmark ruling in August last year, tribunal deputy president Stephen Lieschke upheld Dr Visvanathan’s claims of discrimination against Associate Professor Christopher Zeitz and Jacquelin Wood. Both were in senior positions in SA Health alongside Dr Visvanathan.

The claim was initially filed in May 2016 and was the subject of protracted hearings involving thousands of pages of emails and internal communications. The tribunal dismissed other aspects of the lawsuit but concluded Dr Visvanathan had suffered a detriment because of being excluded by other staff.

Mr Lieschke ruled Dr Visvanathan was entitled to be paid $115,160, comprising compensation for economic loss and expenses of $75,160 and injury costs of $40,000.

But in a judgment published on Saturday, the full sitting of the tribunal overturned Mr Lieschke’s findings.

The Department for Health and Wellbeing’s appeal, led by Frances Nelson QC, argued Mr Lieschke made mistakes both about the facts and the law which should have been applied.

The main question on appeal was whether the actions of the department fitted within the narrow scope of the lawsuit which specified Dr Visvanathan was discriminated against because she had raised concerns about her health and safety at work.

Ms Nelson argued that Mr Lieschke had made “broadbrush findings” about incidents reaching as far back as 2009.

The tribunal concluded that a “glaringly improbable” motivation had been attributed to staff allegedly trying to keep Dr Visvanathan from becoming the head of a health unit.

“A greater degree of clarity and specificity was required to support a finding of a pattern of exclusionary conduct,” the tribunal concluded.

It refused to go into a detailed analysis of other accusations of exclusionary conduct over several years.

“No doubt aggrieved executive members and so-called supporters would prefer that we rule on all such matters, but we do not consider it is necessary or appropriate to do so given the fundamental deficiencies (in the initial decision),” they said.

“The complaints by the applicant as to exclusionary conduct should have been pursued in another forum.”