A family’s appeal for compensation after a courier died of a heart attack while making deliveries has been rejected. 

The widow and two children of 64-year-old Terry Clifford filed workers’ compensation claims suggesting his death while driving in 2016 was triggered by exposure to traffic-related air pollution, and therefore linked to his work. 

But Mr Clifford’s company, Nonconformist, denied liability on the basis the heart attack was not covered under the NSW Workers Compensation Act 1987. Its insurer had declined the claim. 

The family took the dispute to the Workers Compensation Commission in February 2020, and an arbitrator ruled in their favour. That decision was set aside on appeal by the commission’s deputy president in August 2021, and the matter was reheard by a member of the Personal Injury Commission, which had replaced the Workers Compensation Commission. 

That member dismissed the claims in May 2022, concluding the claimants had “not proven a causal connection between the deceased’s employment on January 22 2016 and his death”. 

An appeal to the commission’s president was rejected early last year. 

Each of the claimants then challenged the president’s decision in the Court of Appeal, which this month ruled against them, with Justice Jeremy Kirk noting that “right of appeal requires that the party appealing is aggrieved by a decision ... in point of law”. 

“Points of law were not properly identified by the appellants in their amended notices of appeal or in their written submissions,” he said. 

Mr Clifford, from Central Coast, died while driving in Campvale, near Newcastle. His vehicle left the road at 80kmh and ran across a grass verge for about 50 metres before hitting a steel fence post and a tree. 

Investigators later found there had been no attempt to apply the brakes, and an autopsy found he had “died from ischaemic heart disease secondary to coronary artery atherosclerosis”. 

In their initial appeal for compensation, the family relied on reports from a consultant cardiologist who cited studies about an association between such cardiac events and traffic-related air pollution. 

They also relied on calculations supplied by an occupational hygienist regarding possible exposure to pollution during Mr Clifford’s courier work. 

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