Reality Show Contestant Wins Workers Compensation Claim

A contestant on the Channel 7 reality show House Rules has been found to be an employee and entitled to workers’ compensation benefits under the Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW).

The applicant in the matter, Ms Prince, alleged she suffered a psychological injury caused by her participation in the show.  Ms Prince complained of feeling harassed and bullied during filming, which she said was aggravated and encouraged by the producer.  Ms Prince alleged that when she complained to Channel 7, she and her partner on the show (Fiona Taylor) were threatened with being portrayed negatively.  She said that Channel 7 proceeded to portray them as bullies in an episode aired in April 2017.  The online abuse that followed including threats of serious physical assault.  Ms Prince claimed that this resulted in her being unable to obtain work and left her feeling devastated and worthless.  Ms Prince said she wanted to kill herself after the episode aired and she began drinking in an attempt to self-medicate her injury.

Ms Prince described arriving on set in Sydney on 1 December 2016 and being isolated with Ms Taylor from the other contestants. She said:

As soon as Fiona and I entered the studio for the scoring of the teams’ work we could see and feel the hatred from the other teams. We did not understand where all of it was coming from. We discovered months later that the “reveal footage” that was shown to the other teams only contained our negative comments about their renovation work and none of the positive things that we had said. They later told us that they had felt hurt and upset that we didn’t seem to care how hard they had worked, and they thought we were the nastiest people on the planet.

Ms Prince reported her injury to Channel 7 in May of 2017, claiming her injury was caused by “systematic isolation” and the “encouragement of bullying by co-competitors” resulting in injuries of “adjustment disorder, anxiety disorder, depression and PTSD”.

Channel 7’s insurer declined the claim and it fell to the New South Wales Workers Compensation Commission to determine:

  • Whether Ms Prince was a “worker” or “deemed worker”
  • Whether she suffered an injury pursuant to the 1987 Act
  • Whether her employment (if found) was a substantial contributing factor to her injury.

Contestant an employee

Channel 7 argued Ms Prince was not an employee and emphasised that she was a contestant trying to win a prize of $200,000.  It argued the contract was neither one for service nor of service, because no service was provided by Ms Prince.  The fact Ms Prince was paid the sum of $500 per week along with an allowance of $500 per week during her time on the show was merely a payment for allowances due to Ms Prince giving up her normal circumstances while participating in the competition.

The Commission ultimately determined that the relationship between Ms Prince and Channel 7 was that of employer and employee.  It pointed to the following factors as weighing in favour of that finding:

  • The rate of remuneration was set by the respondent;
  • The applicant was an integral part of the show and essential to the very product and business in which the respondent was engaged;
  • The respondent had exclusive use of the applicant for every hour of every day during which the show was being filmed;
  • The respondent had the power to veto the applicant wearing certain clothes, and she was unable to wear any items which displayed business or brand names;
  • The rules of the show provided the applicant was a public face of the respondent’s business;
  • The respondent paid the applicant an allowance for her weekly expenses, paid on a pro rata basis;
  • The applicant took no risk as an entrepreneur in the running of her own business. Rather, she was paid a weekly rate which was set by the respondent;
  • The activity being carried out by the applicant (and Ms Taylor and the other contestants) was done for the benefit of the respondent’s business, rather than any enterprise of her own. Any goodwill arising from that activity vested in the respondent’s enterprise, rather than in the applicant;
  • The applicant commenced and completed tasks when directed by the respondent;
  • The respondent provided tools and materials for the applicant to use;
  • The applicant employed no one else to carry out the work for them, and to the extent she retained tradespeople, they were approved by the respondent and the cost of them was taken from a budget allocated to the applicant by the respondent

Injury

On the question of whether Ms Prince suffered an injury and whether the employment was a substantial contributing factor, the Commission found that there was little doubt that Ms Prince was placed in a hostile and adversarial environment in the course of her employment.  It held that her employment was not only a substantial contributing factor to her injury but was the main contributing factor to its development. The Commission said:

I find it extraordinary, in circumstances where the respondent was made aware by the applicant of hateful comments posted on its social media platforms, that it did not take steps to either remove those comments or to close the comments on its own posts. The failure to do so represents, in my view, a factor to which the applicant has reacted and which has contributed to her injury.

Prince v Seven Network (Operations) Limited [2019] NSWWCC 313