Browsing: WHS decisions (VIC) | Page 1

A company that failed to ensure a workplace gate was inspected by a qualified engineer, after it was modified, has been fined for exposing other businesses' workers to health and safety risks.

• Double-fatality fines too low to deter safety breaches, says union; and
  
• Department of Defence charged over psychosocial risks.

Two organisations have been charged with exposing non-workers to health and safety risks, after an inquest found their "failures and shortcomings" contributed to a boy's death, and slammed one of them for attempting to deflect blame by claiming others led it "into a state of ignorance" on the relevant safety risks.

• COVID odd jobs end in health and safety conviction;
  
• Alarming glut of falls reported by regulator; and
  
• Carbon monoxide warning triggered by forklift death.

An upstream duty holder has been prosecuted and fined for providing plant with a manual that was missing safety instructions for inspection and cleaning tasks. Another duty holder has been fined for failing to provide a demarcated safety zone for delivery drivers, which led to a double amputation.

The High Court has agreed to consider quashing the application of allegedly outdated judgments that bar damages for psychiatric injuries caused by dismissal processes, in the case of a worker who was subjected to a sham dismissal after an incident on a work trip.

Another employer has been fined for workplace health and safety breaches affecting children, with its failures including not maintaining a safe supervision ratio of employees to customers.

The full written reasons for Victoria's first workplace manslaughter conviction have outlined four key differences between the case and Australia's first industrial manslaughter prosecution in 2020. They also show the defendant's director should not have moved a forklift "another inch" until he was fully aware of the location of a pedestrian worker.

In the latest of a recent series of WHS prosecutions involving failures affecting vulnerable people like children, a teacher based in another country has been sentenced over the deaths of two teenage students in Australia.

A workplace supervisor has been sentenced for recklessly allowing a drug-affected truck driver to drive and kill four police officers, but cleared of allegations he would have known the driver was in an unfit state just by looking at him. He was originally charged with four counts of manslaughter.