Successful appeal in finger injury case

SafetyAtWorkBlog mainly keeps away from referring to specific court decisions on OHS Prosecutions because, to a large extent, these are decisions of law rather than safety management.  The judgements also require clear legal interpretation so that any management lessons of the judgement can be extracted.

Another reason is that SafetyAtWorkBlog intends to be a FREE conduit for OHS discussion and news. We don’t agree that blogs should refer to information that can only be accessed through subscriptions.  That approach renders a blog advertising which is contrary to what we believe a weblog should be.

In this context some readers may be interested in reading the judge’s decision in an appeal case that has appeareed on several Australian OHS sites in the last day.

According to a judgement in the South Australia Industrial Court:

Adelaide Industrial Labour Service Pty Ltd (AILS)… is a labour hire company which employed John McCutcheon on 19 May 2005. At the time Mr McCutcheon was eighteen years old and had no trade qualifications or experience.
On 19 May 2005 AILS sent Mr McCutcheon to work for Dagenham Pty Ltd (trading as Link Plus) as a labourer.
On 20 May 2005 Mr McCutcheon whilst operating a pipe bending machine which was unguarded, sustained serious finger injuries to both hands. Mr McCutcheon had not received adequate instruction or training to operate that machine.
Dagenham was charged with a breach of s 19(1) of the Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Act 1986 (the Act) and was sentenced on 18 December 2006 by Ardlie IM to a penalty of $12,000, discounted on account of its guilty plea to $9,000.

The court has reduced the fine by $3,000 and has found that the Industrial Magistrate in the initial case made a defective decision.

The full decision is available for download HERE

Categories Blog, contractor, law, OHS, safety, Uncategorized, workplaceTags , ,

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