Five hazards, one workplace, no one listening: the Court Services Victoria case

In 2015, Jessica Wilby was promoted to chief lawyer at the Melbourne Coroner's Court. She was told the dual role would last a couple of weeks. Eight months later, she was still carrying both positions, working nights and weekends in a workplace later described by an independent coroner as "toxic." In 2018, Jessica took her own life. She had no prior history of mental illness.

In 2023, Court Services Victoria was convicted and fined almost $380,000 for failing to manage psychosocial risk at work. The court found CSV had allowed a toxic workplace culture to take hold at the Coroner's Court that contributed to the death of one worker and numerous others taking stress leave.

The case, WorkSafe Victoria v Court Services Victoria, is one of Australia's most significant psychosocial risk prosecutions. It matters because WorkSafe didn't prosecute over the death itself. They wound the clock back and asked a different question: had Court Services Victoria been proactively managing the risk? The answer was no.

What went wrong

Between December 2015 and September 2018, multiple intersecting psychosocial hazards created the WHS risk at the Coroner's Court. According to WorkSafe Victoria's findings, these included exposure to traumatic material, role conflict, high workloads and work demands, poor workplace relationships, and inappropriate workplace behaviours including bullying and harassment.

"There was an intersection of about seven or so psychosocial hazards," says Tony Morris, founder of SAFE TM, who examined the case in detail on Verimark's Trust at Work webinar series (Morris maps the case against SafeTM's broader 12-hazard framework, which adds categories like job control, change management, and organisational justice). "Any workplace that has different divisions, is quite large, how does it know what's happening in different jurisdictions, in different areas of the business when you're not there all the time?"

That question gets to the heart of the prosecution. Court Services Victoria, the parent entity, is much larger than the Coroner's Court. The hazards accumulated in a single division over years, and the organisation either didn't know or didn't act. WorkSafe's position was straightforward: why didn't they know?

Why Jessica didn't report

The incident and others at CSV led to a public review commissioned in 2020, known as the Szoke Report (Review of Sexual Harassment in Victorian Courts), which made 20 recommendations for improvement. The report documented a culture of silence and power imbalances. Some of the worst behaviour came from senior figures (lawyers, barristers, judges) whose positions made them difficult to challenge.

"People not feeling that they know where to go or how do I report the problems," says David Morgan, Managing Director of Veremark's Whistleblower Technology Solutions, describing the dynamic. "Power imbalances, because some of the worst people in terms of their behaviours were very senior people. People felt threatened by that and didn't feel that they could speak their mind or challenge these behaviours."

Tony Morris puts it more bluntly: "A lot of people may not wish to raise issues because they feel that it will affect their career. And you know what? They're probably right in some circumstances."

That's the uncomfortable reality. Reporting systems only work when people trust them. In environments where the hazards are systemic and the perpetrators are senior, standard HR channels collapse. Jessica carried the burden because the system gave her nowhere safe to speak up. 

What the conviction actually means

The almost-$380,000 fine is modest by corporate standards. The precedent is not. WorkSafe's prosecution framework focused on whether the organisation had risk assessments in place, whether controls existed, and whether anyone was measuring whether those controls were working. Court Services Victoria failed on all three counts.

"Where's the risk assessment? Where's the controls? Where's the measuring and monitoring as to these controls to minimise the risk?" asks Morris. "The case was that Court Services Victoria were not aware. The next question is, well, why weren't they?"

For boards and executives across Australia, the implication is clear. Psychosocial risk management now carries the same legal weight as physical safety. Ignorance of conditions within your own divisions is not a defence.

Where most organisations actually sit

Morris has adapted the Hudson Safety Maturity Model into a psychosocial risk maturity framework with five stages, from "Disassociated" (no awareness) through to "Dynamic" (embedded in culture). His assessment of the Australian market is sobering: "I've not seen any organisation, government or private, ASX-listed or small, being a dynamic, very right-hand side. No one is managing this risk systematically at the moment."

Most organisations, he says, sit at stage two: Reactive. They act after an incident, not before. Policies exist on paper but aren't embedded in practice.

Morgan sees the same pattern through the whistleblowing lens. Overlaying a whistleblower management system onto Morris's maturity model reveals how many of the same gaps recur: policies that describe how to raise a concern but no technology enabling secure disclosure, grievance processes with no connection to WHS reporting, board reports that capture complaint volumes without asking whether the absence of complaints means the absence of problems or the absence of trust.

"The law itself and the protection of whistleblowers under the law is a very small piece of the jigsaw puzzle when it comes to a best practice whistleblower management system," says Morgan. "It is actually around implementation, how it's designed, and making it fit for purpose for organisations."

If your psychosocial risk dashboard is all green, you're probably at stage two, not stage five.

This article is a companion piece to Episode 4 of the Trust at Work webinar series. Watch the full conversation between David Morgan and Tony Morris →

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