In November 2013, a magistrate found the woman suffered mental injury – which included anxiety and agoraphobia – and had been totally incapacitated from work.

The magistrate ordered the woman receive compensation and medical expense payments for a period between March 2012 and 2013.

But her employer appealed that decision to the ACT Supreme Court on six grounds, including that the magistrate erred in failing to deal with a challenge to the reliability of her evidence.

During the case, it was agreed that the woman had been employed in 2008 and promoted on several occasions.

In the years leading up to the breakdown, she had been under considerable financial and personal pressure at home.

Records showed she had sought treatment for depression, alcohol and prescription-drug abuse, and self-harm.

But she had been able to separate the problems in her personal life from her workplace duties before a meeting with her manager in March 2012.

At the meeting, the woman was told of complaints about her supervision of staff and her interpersonal relations.

During the trial, the employer's lawyers argued that the woman's mental injury had been the result of reasonable administrative action.

But the magistrate rejected the manager's evidence

Justice John Burns, in his judgment on the appeal, said the real challenge had been to the magistrate's findings about the way the meeting had been conducted.

He accepted that the woman had been given little warning and rejected the manager's evidence.

"The question of whether the respondent had been given advance notice of the nature of the matters to be discussed in the meeting was clearly a matter of great significance, and yet those notes were not produced [as evidence by the manager]," Justice Burns wrote.

"In addition, AF testified that there were several occasions prior to 14 March 2012 when she met with the respondent "and the measurement team" to talk about the allegations.

"No notes of those conversations were produced, nor were any members of the 'measurement team' called to give evidence on behalf of the appellant, and their absence was not explained."

Justice Burns said the woman would not have been so visibly shocked during the meeting, as had been conceded by the manager, if she had been forewarned of the allegations.

"The magistrate concluded that AF's conduct in the meeting as it progressed was not reasonable, and he gave comprehensive reasons for coming to that conclusion.

"There was ample evidence to support his conclusion.

"The appeal is dismissed with costs."