A federal tribunal has found public servants who suffer psychological harm from minor office disputes may be entitled to workers’ compensation.

Australian Federal Police administrator Sandra Carney has won a legal battle for compensation after she suffered mental harm from a minor workplace disagreement.

Ms Carney’s claim related issues created by a workflow chart at the AFP's Canberra headquarters two years ago.

The public sector insurer Comcare had originally refused to pay her claim for “adjustment disorder”, but Ms Carney has now won an appeal against that decision.

The trouble began in January 2014, when Ms Carney would not discuss a workflow chart in a meeting with her acting boss because she and her team had not yet read the document.

Ms Carney’s supervisors were unhappy and called a meeting when her permanent boss returned, leading to a situation where she says she was “paraded” before her colleagues while her bosses searched for a free meeting room.

She was left upset, humiliated, embarrassed and traumatised by her treatment, and cried on her way home.

By September of that year, Ms Carney said she had been given two adverse performance assessments and been removed from her team leader position in a restructure.

Ms Carney lodged a workers' compensation claim after the second adverse assessment, which Comcare refused, leading to the appeal that ended this week.

The medical experts that gave evidence to the tribunal – one on behalf of Ms Carney and one for Comcare - both acknowledged “some predisposition on Ms Carney's part to injury arising from workplace conflict”.

Administrative Appeals Tribunal presiding member Gary Humphries found that while Ms Carney had a predisposition to workplace injuries, but Comcare remained liable to pay the claim.

“With this glass jaw, as Prof Robertson described it, leading to emotional reactions to a succession of workplace incidents, the difficulty in attributing a particular mental condition to incidents on particular dates is obvious,” Mr Humphries wrote in his decision on the case.

“The evidence strongly suggests that Ms Carney responded emotionally, even viscerally, to incidents of workplace stress.

“Both experts acknowledged that she was prone to such reactions when she perceived she was subjected to bullying or unfair treatment.

“Prof Robertson commented that her experience of such treatment was tantamount to a narcissistic injury.

“She clearly has a particular susceptibility to adverse reactions in these settings – an eggshell skull, as her counsel described it – but this fact does not diminish the reality of the psychological impact this has occasioned during her working life, nor does it make those reactions any less compensable if the legal test of an ailment is satisfied.”

Successful Comcare claimants are entitled to their full salaries for up to 45 weeks off work, and 75 per cent of their salary, plus expenses, until either they return to work or retire.