Landlord agreed for the tenant to fix the roof and pay the tenant $1,000. Tenant had a fall and became a paraplegic. Tenant makes a workers comp claim and on appeal the NSW tribunal found the tenant to be an employee of Landlord for the purposes of workers compensation because Landlord agreed to pay the tenant.
The lesson from the story is that if you as a Landlord approve of a tenant doing their own repairs and pay the tenant, then in the event of an accident/injury the tenant could be found to be an employee of the Landlord for the purposes of a workers compensation claim. This then would require the Landlord to be enrolled as an employer with WorkCover.
The safest course of action for Landlords is to only have qualified tradespersons carry out repairs.
For those of you who really want to know all the details, you can read all the detail of the case in Supreme Court of New South Wales - Court of Appeal website.
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