Hi guys, I've checked the forum and couldn't find another thread relating to legal issues so I thought I'd give this a crack. Feel free to raise your own legal issues too, although I would suggest being careful about releasing specific details...
I'm sure there are some YF faithful out there that work in the field or have a sound understanding of legal situations, who could possibly help out.
I wanted to start off anyway regarding a case that I'm currently fighting with my employer that's been going on for a month or so - I want to state right now that I will not be giving out specific information relating to my employer or specific details about my case because a) I'm not willing to jeopardise my case; and b) I'm after general advice that I may have perhaps missed so that I can pass on to lawyers who are currently representing me.
Anyway, just after the new year I was the victim of a workplace incident which resulted in a significant amount of time off work, and a long recovery process, with no promise of recovering fully (as in recovering to a standard that I enjoyed before the incident). I have absolutely had no problems with ACC who were very helpful to me and have been in constant contact which is pretty much above and beyond what I had expected so that was a massive positive for me, as I have heard some absolute horror stories which put the sharks up me about having to deal with them.
Over the past several weeks I have been eased back into work and have worked my way up to 'full duties' albeit with a bit of residual pain. Lo and behold, once I worked up to this, not long afterwards I received a letter from HR advising in no uncertain terms that I was in serious trouble in relation to this incident as well as several other incidents which they have cobbled together as they apparently are loosely connected to my serious injury (Hence engaging my lawyer). I was presented this letter and a some evidence for one of these issues and this is where I have gone to my lawyer.
They advised me that the letter from HR was missing key evidence/statements and investigation reports for several of these other 'issues' and asked me to go back to them to obtain this so they could go over the case in full. Well this is where it gets interesting - I asked for this information a couple of weeks ago and at the time the conversation became very heated, basically to the point where they intimated that I was clutching at straws (which has pissed me off highly!). All I was after was information that both myself and my lawyer know is highly relevant to the case - this was not forthcoming. Furthermore, several days later they withdrew the disciplinary meeting, giving me a letter to inform me of this and that they will be in touch about moving forward.
By now I became highly suspicious. I have since obtained a physical record of all site wide incidents within timeframes stated in my letter (printouts and several screenshots all of which are timestamped) I was specifically looking for dates that involved me, and surprise surprise there is nothing documented, yet I've supposedly committed some serious offences.
So now, on the advice of my father (familiar with the process) and my lawyer, they suspect my employer may be covering for things on their end that are not entirely above board. This includes possibly not filing a Notifiable Injury notice with Worksafe NZ, which if true, will be a story worth taking to the media, or so I've been told. I only started putting two and two together over a period of several days, as I asked for copies of a Worksafe report but they were not forthcoming. I have since contacted Worksafe about this case directly and am currently waiting for a response from them.
Anyway, basically that's where I'm at so far, I would appreciate any feedback, knowledge or other things I should be looking for that will assist my case. I've covered off procedures/documentation/site inductions/changes of process with the lawyer too and that will likely be raised with my employer if/when they try to continue their case against me. Even if they don't, I'm pretty certain that I will be heading down the road of a Personal Grievance as I feel I've been made to look an absolute fool out of this, and I won't tolerate that.
Basically after the past 12 months I have had, I have nothing more to lose and I will fight this until the bitter end.
Thanks in advance for any help or advice given. Sorry if it's a bit of a read also.