Update to ‘Prosecution Results’

The Prosecution Results section at HandS, containing news of prosecutions, fines and compensation payouts in a wide range of trades and industries, has been updated this weekend to include a number of new cases from the period of February 2008 to July 2008.  The new additions begin on page 15 of the section.

The Prosecution Results section is provided for your research on related issues. The items may be helpful to you in presentations to safety committee or managerial meetings, or in your efforts to illustrate points and progress issues in your workplace. They could assist you in elaborating the need for thorough risk assessments, or for training that has not taken place. Some cases may also be of interest to solicitors handling cases with similar circumstances. The section is fully searchable on key words.

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New Prosecution Results section

A new section has been added to HandS Health & Safety Resources that may be of interest to you.

Prosecution Results contains examples of prosecutions, fines and compensatory payouts in a number of trades, settings and circumstances, and they are provided as an adjunct to your research on related issues. They may be helpful to you in presentations to safety committee or managerial meetings, or in your efforts to illustrate points and progress issues in your workplace. For example, they could be of help to you in elaborating the need for thorough risk assessments, or for training that has not taken place. More recent cases may also be of interest to solicitors handling similar cases. The section is fully searchable (keywords) and will be updated as often as possible.

The cases have been compiled from issues of Risks newsletter and my thanks go to Rory O’Neill, editor of Hazards magazine, and to Hugh Robertson, Senior Health & Safety Officer for the Trades Union Congress (TUC) for their kind permission to reprint the material.

A new link button to the section is located on the HandS home page, on the left side near the top.

Thank you for your continued interest and support, as HandS approaches it’s 5th year on the Net.

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Vibration permanently harms man’s hands

As reported by Rory O’Neill in the Risks Newsletter:

A 24-year-old crack tester from Doncaster who says he was forced out of his job after vibrating tools permanently damaged his hands has received a £30,000 compensation settlement. Unite member Dean Grice was employed by MSI Forks Ltd, a firm making forks for forklift trucks. He had worked for the firm since 1997. His job required him to grind out defects on the forks using pencil grinders and angle grinders – tools which vibrated in his hands. As a result, he developed hand arm vibration syndrome (HAVS – also known as vibration white finger) – a painful condition which causes the fingers to go white and numb – as well as carpal tunnel syndrome, which causes numbness, tingling and pain in the fingers. Mr Grice explained: ‘It was my GP who told me that I had symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome and he referred me to the Doncaster Royal Infirmary. Sadly my employer refused to re-deploy me to a job where I wouldn’t be exposed to vibration so I had no choice but to resign.’ Unite regional secretary Davey Hall said: ‘This is not the first time that an employee of MSI Forks Ltd has suffered from hand arm vibration syndrome. We hope that it will now force them to ensure that correct health and safety procedures are in place.’ The two conditions are commonly associated with work with vibrating tools, and have been the subject of a series of recent industrial disease payouts.

Thompsons Solicitors news release

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Company prosecution after fall from roof

From the Health and Safety Executive press office:

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is warning companies whose business involves working at height to ensure they provide suitable safety equipment and have appropriate procedures in place before allowing their staff to work in potentially dangerous situations.

It follows the prosecution of a North Wales roofing contractor in relation to an incident where one of his employees sustained serious injuries, and later died, after a 25ft fall through a skylight on the roof of the Comet store in Wrexham.

Paul Christopher Alker, 33, required surgery for a broken collar bone after the fall, just days after starting work with Wrexham Roof Services Ltd. He died shortly after his operation.

In a prosecution brought by the Crown Prosecution Service, Steven Christopher Smith, director of Wrexham Roof Services Ltd, Rhostyllen, Wrexham, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, a charge under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and a further charge of committing acts intending to pervert the course of justice. Smith was jailed for a total of two and a half years following a hearing at Mold Crown Court.

HSE assisted North Wales Police on the investigation into the incident, and HSE inspector Debbie John said it was not acceptable for employers to cut corners.

“Mr Smith clearly knew that he should have provided safety harnesses for people working on roofs, but chose only to do this after the incident which led to the death of Mr Alker.

“Figures show that in 2006/07, 45 people have died and more than 3000 suffered a serious injury after a fall from height in the workplace. It remains the most common cause of fatal injury in the workplace, but the risk does not just apply to those working at great height. Many fatal and serious injuries are caused by people falling from below head height too.

“Health and Safety rules are not there to inconvenience employers or to wrap employees or others in cotton wool – they are in place to ensure incidents like this are prevented, and the risk of this incident happening would have been significantly reduced had appropriate safety equipment been provided.”

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£237,000 pay out to injured electrician

An electrician whose hand became crushed in a machine while working at Heathrow airport has won £237,000 in the wake of a Unite-backed legal claim.

Unite member Eric Palmer, from Mold in Clwyd suffered agonising injuries and shock in August 2004 when his hand got caught in a machine which separates concrete and water from sand and aggregate mix.

He had warned his line manager that he wasn’t trained for the repair job but his pleas went unheeded.

The injuries have never properly healed despite extensive medical treatment and surgery and still give him nightmares.

He said: “I suffered physical and mental injuries as a result of the accident. Even the simple things which previously I would have taken in my stride, like building a pond in the garden which has stood unfinished for three years, are difficult, if not impossible. Even now I find it difficult to sleep and have nightmares about the machine and what happened.”

Solicitor Ken Jones said Eric Palmer’s employer – construction company Laing O’Rourke – had failed on several counts. He was clearly put in a position of danger and was given no guidance whatsoever as to how to handle the machine. Eric himself recognised that attending to the machine wasn’t the right thing to do. Unfortunately he paid a very high price for agreeing to do it.”
– from the Unite @ctivist Newsletter

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HSE Prosecutions Database

After a lapse of almost a year, HSE is again posting prosecutions. They have begun inputting cases with hearing dates after November 1, 2006, and say they will update new cases weekly as they are reported. “In view of the volume of prosecutions now posted, we are not inputting previous cases. There will therefore be a gap in our database from a hearing date of 24 January 2006 until November 1st. Anyone not finding a case which may have been heard between January and November 2006, should therefore try searching the HSE Prosecutions database.”

Since relaunching the Prosecution database in January 2007, after a break of around a year, the HSE appears to have changed the format of the case numbers. So, for entries with a hearing date before the 24 January 2006, you should search the database with the defendants name, instead of a case number that you may have, if you desire to check details for yourself.

News From HASTAM, at http://www.hastam.co.uk/hsnews/

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Bosses jailed over worker’s death

News in the recent Risks bulletin from Rory O’Neill’s Hazards Magazine:

Two businessmen have been jailed for the manslaughter of a worker who was crushed to death at a concrete plant. Technician Christopher Meachen, 28, was killed at the Concrete Company at Costessey, Norfolk, in November 2005. Owner Timothy Dighton, 45, and area manager Roy Burrows, 46, both pleaded guilty at Norwich Crown Court. Dighton was jailed for a year and Burrows was jailed for nine months. Concrete Company, which has a head office in Peterborough and has 13 sites employing 104 staff, also admitted a charge of manslaughter. The company was fined £75,000 and ordered to pay £89,000 in costs. Christopher Meachen died at the company’s Minimix plant after becoming caught in an unguarded slew conveyer, which carried aggregate and sand up to the hoppers where cement is manufactured. He had only worked at the plant for two months and was due to marry his fiancée, Helen Pamplin, the mother of his three children, in the summer of 2006. The court heard the company had paid ‘no regard to the safety, the livelihoods or the physical wellbeing of decent men’ and his death would not have happened if managers had invested just £2,000 in safety measures. It has since emerged that the firm slipped off the radar of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as director Timothy Dighton failed to inform the watchdog of the company’s existence. Judge Peter Jacobs said Dighton had ‘overall control’ of the plant where the emphasis was ‘on productivity and nothing else.’ He added: ‘He should have known it was totally unsafe and should have not allowed it to continue.’ Detective inspector Richard Graveling of Norfolk Police said: ‘These blatant breaches of health and safety, or indeed lack of any systems to address health and safety issues, can and do lead to fatal injuries, as we have seen in two cases in the last four years, and we will deal with them as major crimes. These convictions should send out a message to other employers in the area that they are fully responsible and accountable for the safety of their employees.’

Norwich Evening News BBC News Online

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Two companies heavily fined

Lessons to learn, about lessons that haven’t been learned, appear in two items of news in the recent Risks bulletin from Rory O’Neill of Hazards Magazine:

Firm fined after forklift worker is paralysed
A Berwick upon Tweed firm has been fined £20,000 after a worker was paralysed in a forklift truck incident. Silvery Tweed Cereals Ltd was fined and ordered to pay costs of £5,397 at Berwick upon Tweed Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to breaching workplace safety laws. Steven Rogers, 29, suffered the injuries in June 2006 after was pinned to the floor when a bin he was attempting to empty fell from the forks. Commenting on the case, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspector Martin Baillie said: ‘In this case Silvery Tweed Cereals Ltd did not ensure the load was adequately secured, nor did they make a suitable risk assessment and they did not ensure that all of their operators received adequate forklift truck training.’ He added: ‘The tragic result was that one of the employees, Steven Rogers aged 29 of Berwick, sustained injuries which have left him permanently paralysed after a downgrade bin which he was attempting to empty fell from the forks of a forklift truck and pinned him to the ground.’ The HSE inspector said forklift trucks were responsible for just under 2,000 reportable incidents last year, including seven deaths. ‘Risks include being struck by a moving truck, crushed by an overturning vehicle, becoming trapped between a truck and an object or, as in this case being crushed by a falling load,’ he said. ‘Employers must ensure they assess the risks involved in any use of these vehicles and take appropriate steps to counter those risks. They must also provide adequate health and safety training for any employees operating forklift trucks.’

HSE news release

House manufacturer fined £65,000 for death
A Birmingham firm manufacturing new build homes has been fined £65,000 after a worker was crushed by a machine. Space 4 Limited, the timber frame manufacturing subsidiary of house building giant Persimmon Homes, was fined £65,000 with costs of £60,000 at Birmingham Crown Court following a prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The case was brought after the death of Philip Macken, who was killed on 10 December 2001. Following a problem with an automated foam injection machine, he entered the enclosure to make an adjustment. While he was inside the enclosure the machine started automatically and Mr Macken was trapped against the machine and received fatal crush injuries. Speaking after the case, HSE investigating inspector Tony Mitchell said: ‘Companies need to ensure that all safety devices are fully operational. In this case properly fitted interlocks would have prevented access to the enclosure, and saved Mr Macken’s life.’ He added: ‘Guarding and fencing of automated machinery is a basic requirement and the standards are well known. Simple checks should be carried out to ensure workers are protected from dangerous parts and that safety features are fitted and in good order.’

HSE news release

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