In another case that appears to extend common law duty of care principles, a "non-employer" has been ordered to pay an injured labour-hire worker $1.35 million in damages, after its tagging failures allowed an unidentified person to interfere with vital equipment.
A second PCBU has been fined after a young excavator operator's skull was pierced by a flying steel bar because his supervisor neglected to instruct him to close the vehicle's window.
Big companies need to lead by example and improve safety standards and practices in partnership with "smaller players" like their contractors and suppliers, according to a panel of top business leaders.
Project designers and principals should have contractual arrangements for testing products for asbestos, and be prepared for increased safety duties and regulatory powers, OHSS lawyer Katherine Morris says in this Q&A with OHS Alert.
Engaging a "competent person" to assess electrical safety and install protection devices for a roof space might not have prevented a labourer's electric shock, but isolating and de-energising the space would have, a court has ruled in finding two employers guilty of WHS breaches.
Ensuring employees who prepare risk assessments have the necessary expertise is one of five important lessons from a recent inquiry into the death of a man at a festival, according to a health, safety and security lawyer.
A principal contractor previously convicted and fined over a worker's three-metre fall, has been ordered to pay 40 per cent of the man's common law damages for failing to "retain and exercise a supervisory power".
A double amputee has been granted supreme court permission to sue nine employers for damages, five years after he sustained his catastrophic injuries in what should have been an exclusion zone.
All workplace participants - from designers and customs brokers to workers - need to be aware of their WHS responsibilities relating to imported products, according to the CEO of the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency.
