Lawyer sues over Personal Training Injury

A decision by the NSW Supreme Court has stopped short of finding a personal trainer liable for injuries allegedly suffered by a client during a training session.

David Wilson; a lawyer specialising in compensation, medical negligence and insurance litigation; blamed a personal training session for injuries that had ultimately required spinal fusion surgery on his back.

Wilson claimed that he could barely move forty-eight hours after a personal training session. As a result, he sued personal trainer Alex Draffin and his employer, Vision Personal Training claiming 15 duty of care breaches, including that his newly accredited trainer, aged in his 20s, was too inexperienced and that the program was unsafe.

Wilson, who had apparently begun exercising after his doctors had recommended activity as a way to wean himself off antidepressant medication, questioned the intensity of the session having, according to reports in the Sydney Morning Herald, "asked his trainer to go easy on him because he had had more to drink than he should have the night before."

But the test for negligence was not the highest standards of professional responsibility, Justice Lucy McCallum said, it was "what is reasonable in the circumstances."

Mark Capelin, the co-director of Vision Training, said the company had been confident throughout the case. Capelin explained that Vision required its trainers to have the minimum certificate IV qualification and put them through a nine-week induction with mentors.

Wilson has filed an appeal against the decision and, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, has declined to comment until it is heard.