Supermarket giant Woolworths has been ordered to pay an employee nearly $17,000 compensation after an angry bird ‘severely injured’ her eye.
Anita Smith was about to walk inside Kiama Village Shopping Centre, south of Sydney, when the bird swooped in May last year.
The native pee wee, which has since been culled, was known to guard the entry to the centre and had previously attacked several shoppers.
Ms Smith needed surgery to treat her injury, described in a Workers Compensation Commission decision handed down last month as an ‘inturned central part of the right eye flap’.
Anita Smith was about to walk inside Kiama Village Shopping Centre, south of Sydney, when the bird swooped in May last year
The native pee wee, also called a magpie-lark, was known to guard the entry to the centre and had previously attacked several shoppers (stock image of a pee wee bird)
‘Just prior to entering the Shopping Mall through automatic sliding doors, Ms Smith was attacked by a native pee wee, and sustained a severe right eye injury,’ the ruling reads.
A Woolworths store manager said the chain was not responsible for Ms Smith’s injury and placed the blame on the centre’s management.
‘Centre management had previously been informed regarding a number of bird attacks and chose to do nothing about this until this and other serious incidents happened,’ Woolworths said in its submission.
The supermarket said that Ms Smith, who was on her way to start her shift when the bird swooped, was ‘not performing any work’ at the time.
A Woolworths store manager said the chain was not responsible for Ms Smith’s injury and placed the blame on the centre’s management (stock image)
But John Harris, the commission’s arbitrator, rejected Woolworths’ submission and said Ms Smith’s employment was ‘a substantial contributing factor to the injury’.
‘It is extremely unlikely that Ms Smith would have been attacked by the peewee at that time, had she not been in the course of her employment,’ Mr Harris found.
Kiama council unsuccessfully attempted to deter the bird by placing fake owls in the area, the commission noted.
The bird was later killed in June after the council, which sought a permit to cull it, cordoned off the area and shot it dead, Illawarra Mercury reported.