The Minister of Education wants to challenge a landmark Employment Court ruling awarding two high school councillors almost $1.8 million in damages for the workplace stress they suffered. 

In December 2023, Kath and Ron Cronin-Lampe were awarded damages for workplace stress after they dealt with 32 deaths in one community during their time at Melville High School in Hamilton. Those deaths included student suicides, fatal car crashes, terminal illnesses and murder. 

The amount is believed to be the largest award made in the Employment Court. But the court heard only about 20% has been paid. 

The couple worked at the low decile high school with a roll of 900 as guidance counsellors for 16 and 15 years respectively, spanning three principals from 1996 and 1997 until their employment ended on medical grounds in late 2012. 

The judgment was one of two by Employment Court Judge Bruce Corkill on the case released last year. 

Now the minister is seeking leave to appeal the Employment Court’s second decision claiming the judge in the lower court erred in the way he approached the test for causation in finding the school’s breaches were the material cause of harm suffered by the couple. 

“If Mr and Mrs Cronin-Lampe had PTSD on 2 December 2010, the school’s breaches after 2010 could not have been causative of that PTSD,” Bronwyn Heenan, representing the minister, told the Court of Appeal yesterday. 

But the Cronin-Lampes’ lawyer Erin Anderson, appearing by AVL, said the expert evidence presented to the Employment Court showed PTSD was culminative in nature, so even if the couple’s PTSD existed before 2010, it was exacerbated during the latter part of her clients’ employment. 

“So much so they were completely overwhelmed when they left their employment in 2012.” 

Anderson said the court made a factual assessment and the fact her client’s PTSD existed before 2010 didn’t change the nature of the court’s findings or mean that the court erred in any way. 

Heenan also told the court the damages awarded to the pair included seven years’ of lost income, losses that weren’t foreseeable. Because the pair also elected not to seek treatment for PTSD (on medical advice), the Employment Court should have taken that into account. 

Again, Anderson told the court the judge considered all the evidence and had taken into account the losses that arose in the case. 

She said it was clear from the judgment that the judge had turned his mind to the contract, the contract terms, the specific circumstances that arose from those breaches and the losses that followed, in some circumstances many years later. 

What the court found 

In his decision, Employment Court Judge Corkill found while the Cronin-Lampes worked at Melville High School (MHS) it suffered an “extraordinary number of traumatic events” in its student body, staff and wider community with 32 deaths. 

These included clusters of current and former student suicides, a staff member’s attempted suicide at the school, and the suicide of a student’s mother after his father already died that way. 

Other unexpected tragedies involved fatal car crashes including one where the student driver was charged with manslaughter, a student who was struck by a tyre while walking to school, terminal illnesses, and the murder of a former student by another ex-student. 

The Cronin-Lampes were actively involved in the tragedies and in assisting students and staff with other “very challenging situations”, Corkill said. 

They counselled students for domestic violence, sexual orientation, sexual and psychological abuse, eating disorders and self-harm, and both students and teachers were helped with addiction and mental health issues. 

“If our case had been settled expediently by the Melville High School Board of Trustees, the emotional and financial cost to us and our family would not have been so great,” the couple told NZME at the time. 

“School counsellors are at the chalkface of youth and adolescent mental health. We hope this judgment will pave the way for increased resources, so they have adequate support to do their work.” 

Melville High School and Melville Intermediate closed at the start of this year and have been replaced by Mangakōtukutuku College. 

Justices Mallon, Thomas and Palmer reserved their decision. 

Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.