When the Law Becomes a Weapon
There is a moment when you realise the system is not broken. It is operating as designed.
That moment came for me when I opened an email account — an account created solely for recovery and safe return-to-work communication — while in a telehealth appointment with my Nominated Treating Doctor (NTD). This was a protected clinical setting. My treating doctor was present. So was my distress.
On 29 January 2021, what arrived in that inbox was not support.
It was a legal letter.
A scare tactic.
A warning dressed up as “professional correspondence”.
I viewed the email account on 4 February 2021.
This was particularly cruel and inappropriate given the context: the email address had been established strictly for injury management and return-to-work planning under the NSW workers compensation scheme — not for legal intimidation.
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The Context They Never Acknowledge
At the time:
• I was an injured worker within the NSW workers compensation scheme.
• I was unwell and under active treatment.
• I was attempting to return to work safely, as the law requires.
• I had lodged a complaint with SafeWork NSW, copying three colleagues as witnesses— a lawful, reasonable, and protected act.
That was the trigger.
Within days, Clayton Utz, acting for my employer, sent a letter asserting that I must “refrain” from contacting colleagues and outlining legal positions that had the practical effect of:
• discouraging me from approaching the Fair Work Commission,
• silencing colleagues who were witnesses to workplace conduct, and
• deliberately severing me from my workplace support network.
This was not clarification.
It functioned as deterrence.
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This Is Not an Isolated Firm or an Isolated Tactic
Clayton Utz’s involvement did not occur in a vacuum.
A major joint investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and ABC’s Four Corners, examined systemic failures within Australia’s workers compensation system and raised serious concerns about the conduct of powerful institutions and their advisers.
That investigation reported that Clayton Utz had been involved in reviewing and revising expert reports commissioned by institutional clients, conduct that attracted scrutiny following the Hayne Royal Commission. (See https://www.royalcommission.gov.au/banking ). As The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
“These include revelations that wealth giant AMP reviewed and directed changes to numerous drafts of an expert report it commissioned from law firm Clayton Utz into the ‘fees for no service’ scandal.”
Ferguson, A., Day, L. & Robinson, L. (2020, 27 July). ‘“They treated me like a leper”: How workers’ comp claims were rejected’. SMH / The Age / Four Corners. [Online]:
The relevance here is not historical trivia. It is context.
When a firm with a documented history of participating in the revision of expert material on behalf of powerful institutions later deploys legal correspondence against an injured worker for engaging in protected conduct, the imbalance of power — and the foreseeable impact — is obvious.
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Using a Legal Intermediary to Isolate
In my case, the employer did not contact me directly.
Instead, a legal intermediary was used — employer → lawyers → injured worker — in a way that had the effect of intimidation and isolation.
My GP, who was my Nominated Treating Doctor, told me words to the effect of:
“They should not be harassing you. You are on workers compensation. Forward the letter to your [IRO-funded] workers compensation solicitor.”
So I did.
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When Your Own Lawyer Asks, “What Did You Do?”
My IRO-funded workers compensation solicitor went out of his way to contact the Clayton Utz lawyer involved.
The Clayton Utz lawyer’s response was unambiguous.
He told my legal representative that I was to “refrain” from contacting my colleagues.
Not managers.
Not executives.
Colleagues. Witnesses. My workplace support network.
Then my own legal representative asked me:
“What did you do?”
I remember my response clearly. To quote verbatim:
“I didn’t do anything. They’re the ones engaging in conduct that is inconsistent with workers compensation and workplace protections, and it is harming me and my family.”
When does the victim-blaming stop?
At what point does someone pause and ask:
• Why is an injured worker being deliberately isolated?
• Why are witnesses being discouraged from contact?
• Why is legal pressure being normalised as process?
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Isolation Is the Opposite of Return to Work
The NSW workers compensation scheme is explicitly built around:
• recovery,
• cooperation,
• injury management, and
• return to work
Isolation is not incidental.
It is counter-therapeutic.
It is foreseeably harmful.
And it directly contradicts the statutory purpose of injury management and return-to-work obligations.
Deliberately severing an injured worker from colleagues and workplace contact:
• exacerbates psychological injury,
• compounds trauma, and
• undermines recovery.
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The Medicalisation That “Got the Ball Rolling”
This did not begin with legal correspondence.
Earlier, my employer coerced me, with intimidation tactics, to attend an Independent Medical Examination (IME) — an employer-directed, medico-legal appointment, not treatment.
That appointment was terminated by the practitioner.
No assessment was conducted.
Informed consent was not obtained.
Yet a substantive “medical” report was later produced.
That report — authored by Dr Deepinder Miller — mischaracterised events, attributed termination to me, and applied pejorative descriptors despite the absence of consent or examination.
In January 2026, I lodged a formal complaint with the Health Care Complaints Commission, setting out concerns regarding:
• medico-legal reporting in the absence of assessment,
• mischaracterisation of causation,
• lack of informed consent, and
• foreseeable harm arising from reliance on such a report in employment and statutory contexts.
That complaint is now part of the formal record.
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This Is What Systemic Harm Looks Like — From the Worker’s Side
Not one bad actor. Not one misunderstanding.
But a sequence:
1. Medical authority applied without consent in an employer-directed IME.
2. A report generated without a lawful clinical foundation.
3. Legal correspondence deployed via an intermediary.
4. Witnesses discouraged.
5. The injured worker isolated.
6. Distress reframed as misconduct.
7. The worker blamed for reacting to harm.
All while the system insists it is supporting recovery.
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Why I Am Writing This
Because silence is what this system relies on.
It relies on fear.
It relies on exhaustion.
It relies on injured workers being too unwell to keep speaking.
I am still here.
And I am documenting this — carefully, accurately, and in the public interest — because the next injured worker deserves to know:
If this feels wrong, it is.
If this feels isolating, it is designed that way.
And if you are being blamed for reacting to harm — the problem is not you.
Listening is not a courtesy.
It is a measure of dignity.
And dignity is what this system repeatedly tries to take away.
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Author’s note:
This post reflects my lived experience and is based on contemporaneous correspondence, formal complaints lodged with regulators, and publicly available journalism.
When a human being has exhausted every agency responsible to keep her safe from further harm, and is not only failed, but those “trusted” agencies caused greater harm, this person is left with no other choice but to scream for help to save her life and assert her statutory employee rights.
It should NEVER have reached this point.
(Document 147 and my recent formal complaint lodged with the HCCC).
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Further reading
Nichols, S., Ferguson, Z., & Leong, L. (2023, 21 April). ‘A new code means employers need to protect workers’ mental health. But will it work?’. ABC RN. Online: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-21/how-psychosocial-workplace-hazards-can-impact-mental-health/102224278
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