A few weeks ago, we reported on something we hadn’t expected to find.
ACC told us it had identified ten Work-Related Gradual Process, Disease or Infection claims mentioning glyphosate or Roundup. Every one of them had been declined.
We wanted to know more. What illnesses were these workers claiming for? A follow-up Official Information Act (OIA) request produced another significant piece of information: among those ten declined claims were fewer than four involving cancer and fewer than four involving non-Hodgkin lymphoma. ACC would not provide the exact numbers because the groups were so small that doing so could risk identifying individual claimants.
That left us wondering what happened to these people after ACC said no.
Did they challenge the decision? Did anyone succeed on review? And, perhaps most importantly, did any claimant take their case far enough for a court to examine the evidence and decide whether ACC had got it right?
We now have the answer.
None of them did.
Fewer Than Four Glyphosate or Roundup Claimants Challenged ACC’s Decision
In response to our latest Official Information Act request, GOV-050444, ACC told us that fewer than four of the ten declined claims went to review.
None of those reviews went in favour of the applicant, and none was subsequently appealed.
Because ACC will only say “fewer than four”, we don’t know whether one, two or three people sought a review. What we can work out is that at least seven of the ten people whose claims were declined didn’t seek a review at all.
Why not?
We don’t know, and it would be unfair to invent an explanation for people whose circumstances we know almost nothing about.
But it is difficult not to think about what pursuing a case like this might involve.
Imagine you’ve spent years working around chemicals and you are now seriously ill. You believe your work contributed to that illness, so you make an ACC claim. ACC investigates and says no.
Do you accept the decision? Do you find someone who understands ACC law? Do you gather more medical evidence? Do you challenge ACC through a formal review and, if that fails, contemplate taking the matter further?
And how much energy do you have for any of that if you are also dealing with cancer?
We don’t know whether those considerations influenced any of these particular people. They may have had completely different reasons for stopping. But the numbers tell us that most did stop.
And that has an important consequence.
None of the Ten ACC Claims Reached a New Zealand Court
There is a considerable difference between ACC declining a claim and a court deciding that ACC correctly applied the law and the evidence.
In these ten cases, the first happened.
The second did not.
No court was asked to determine whether ACC’s interpretation or application of the Work-Related Gradual Process, Disease or Infection — or WRGP — test was correct in any of these glyphosate or Roundup claims.
That doesn’t mean ACC got the decisions wrong. We don’t have the individual claim files and cannot make that judgement.
But it doesn’t mean a court would necessarily have agreed with ACC either.
Nobody ever asked one.
And the more we’ve looked into how ACC decides these claims, the more interesting that becomes.
How Does ACC Decide Whether Work Caused or Contributed to an Illness?
This sounds as though it ought to have a straightforward answer.
It doesn’t.
Suppose someone worked as a groundskeeper, farmer or spray contractor for 20 or 30 years. Using glyphosate-based herbicides was a routine part of the job. Years later, that person develops non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
They believe their occupational exposure contributed to their disease.
What would ACC need before it agreed?
The law doesn’t require work to be the only cause. For an ordinary WRGP claim, there must be something about the person’s employment task or work environment that “causes, or contributes to the cause of” the injury or disease.
Those four words — “contributes to the cause” — matter.
Cancer can have multiple contributing factors, and in an individual person it may be impossible for medicine to point to one exposure and say with certainty: that is what caused this cancer.
Scientific studies approach the question differently. They can compare groups of people and ask whether those exposed to a particular substance develop a particular disease more often than those who weren’t exposed.
But ACC isn’t deciding what happened to a population.
It’s deciding what happened to one person.
So how does it bridge that gap?
What Does Prasad v ACC Tell Us About WRGP Claims?
We found a recent High Court case while trying to understand exactly how the WRGP test works.
Prasad v Accident Compensation Corporation wasn’t about glyphosate or cancer. It involved a fitter and machinist who argued that decades of physically demanding work had caused or contributed to osteoarthritis in his shoulder.
But it involved the same current WRGP legislation we’re interested in.
One issue was whether Mr Prasad’s work had actually caused his condition. Medical evidence suggested his employment may have aggravated damage associated with an earlier injury.
That raised an important distinction. Something does not necessarily have to be the sole cause of an injury to satisfy the legislation. The question is whether the employment caused or contributed to the cause.
Then there was another problem: scientific evidence.
ACC’s medical evidence relied partly on the absence of research clearly demonstrating an increased occupational risk for people doing work such as Mr Prasad’s.
At first glance, that might seem fairly decisive.
No evidence of increased risk. Claim fails.
Except that isn’t necessarily how the current law works.
Who Has to Prove the Occupational Risk?
This is where we discovered something we hadn’t appreciated when we began looking at the ten glyphosate claims.
The WRGP law changed in 2022.
Under the current legislation, once the relevant requirements for workplace causation have been established, ACC can still decline a claim if ACC establishes that people doing that work are not at significantly greater risk of suffering the injury than people who don’t.
Notice which way around that is.
It isn’t simply:
The worker must prove that people doing this job are at significantly greater risk.
The legislation places the burden on ACC if it wants to use this particular provision to decline the claim.
And that creates a fascinating problem when the science isn’t conclusive.
If researchers haven’t established that workers doing a particular job are at greater risk, does that prove they aren’t at greater risk?
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
That issue arose in Prasad. The High Court considered it arguable that an absence of evidence demonstrating increased risk may not be enough for ACC to discharge its statutory burden of establishing that there isn’t a significantly greater risk.
The Court wasn’t finally deciding Mr Prasad’s WRGP claim, so we shouldn’t overstate the ruling. It was deciding whether there was a sufficiently arguable legal issue for an appeal to proceed.
But the question it raises is hard to ignore.
Especially when we come back to glyphosate.
What If One of the Glyphosate Claims Had Reached Court?
Among our ten declined claims were people with cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
What we don’t know is what their occupational exposure looked like.
Was someone spraying glyphosate regularly for decades? Were they mixing concentrate? How frequently were they exposed? Which products did they use? What protective equipment did they have? What other chemical exposures were involved?
Perhaps their occupational exposure was extensive. Perhaps it wasn’t.
We simply don’t have their files.
But imagine for a moment that one of these claimants had taken their case all the way through review and then appealed.
A court might eventually have had to grapple with some fascinating questions.
How much weight should be given to epidemiological studies reporting an association between glyphosate exposure and non-Hodgkin lymphoma? How accurately could the person’s occupational exposure be reconstructed after perhaps decades of work? What other possible causes should be considered?
And if ACC relied upon the “significantly greater risk” provision, could it establish that people performing that particular work were not at significantly greater risk?
Perhaps ACC’s decision would have stood.
Perhaps it wouldn’t.
That’s the point.
We don’t know, because none of these cases got that far.
Why Might an ACC Claimant Decide Not to Keep Going?
There is another uncomfortable question here.
How realistic is it to expect someone who is seriously ill to keep fighting?
A claimant may already have gone through medical appointments, treatment and the process of making an ACC claim. Then comes a decline.
If they challenge it, there is a review. If that fails, the next possibility is an appeal to the District Court.
There can be legal and expert evidence to think about, along with time, uncertainty and stress.
Again, we are not saying that this explains why any of these particular claimants stopped. We don’t know.
But there is a broader distinction worth thinking about.
Having a legal right to challenge a decision is not necessarily the same as having the health, resources or determination to keep challenging it until a court finally answers the question.
Here, the claimants themselves went no further.
And so the question remains.
An ACC Decline Is Not the Same as a Court Ruling
This latest OIA response gives us a clearer picture of the ten cases.
All ten WRGP claims mentioning glyphosate or Roundup were declined. Fewer than four claimants sought review. None of those reviews went in their favour, and none was appealed.
So we can say that none of these ten claims obtained cover through either ACC’s original decision or the review process identified in its response.
But there is something we cannot say.
We cannot say that New Zealand’s courts have examined occupational glyphosate claims involving these illnesses and decided that the exposure did not cause or contribute to them.
No court examined the evidence in these ten cases. No judge considered how ACC had applied the WRGP test to their particular circumstances. And no court decided whether ACC’s conclusions were right or wrong.
Perhaps one day a sufficiently well-documented case will get that far.
What would happen if someone with a substantial history of occupational glyphosate exposure developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, made a WRGP claim, challenged a decline and kept going until a New Zealand court actually had to decide?
Would ACC’s decision stand?
We genuinely don’t know.
And that brings us to the next part of our investigation.
If ACC is making these decisions before they ever reach a courtroom, how does ACC decide whether your work made you sick?
We’ve asked ACC for the internal guidance, assessment material and decision templates its staff use when considering work-related disease and chemical exposure.
When they arrive, we’re going to find out.
This article is intended for public information and discussion. It is not legal advice or a legal opinion. Anyone considering an ACC claim, review or appeal should seek advice appropriate to their individual circumstances.
Image Source & Attribution
The feature image on this page was created using AI-assisted image generation from an original concept developed by No More Glyphosate NZ and refined for publication in Canva.
AI is a useful creative tool for visualising complex investigative topics that cannot be meaningfully photographed, allowing us to illustrate ideas without implying that any specific scene or event actually occurred.
