A company charged with safety breaches, after a subcontractor who didn't realise he was working at height dropped a tool 40 metres down a shaft onto another worker, has committed to spending more than $240,000 on safety undertakings.
A PCBU has been handed a pre-discount fine of $600,000 for its "wholly inadequate" safety systems, which involved directing two inexperienced workers to perform a high-risk chemicals task, and left them with serious burns from an explosion.
Two companies have been ordered to pay a total of more than $1.2 million in damages to a worker who slipped and fell 10 metres from an access ladder that didn't comply with Australian Standards.
A PCBU's feeble attempt to install edge protection after scaffolding was removed, at one of its sites, led to a worker sustaining traumatic fall injuries, and warranted a pre-discount fine of $320,000, a court has found.
An employer charged with WHS breaches after a blast hurled rocks at workers inside an exclusion zone has escaped conviction, with a regulator failing to prove beyond reasonable doubt that appointing a supervisor with less than "optimal" experience was a breach of the employer's duty.
Two PCBUs have been handed pre-discount fines totalling $460,000 for their involvement in the death of a delivery driver. One of the PCBUs failed to comply with its consultation duties, which could have been satisfied through a simple email enquiry, a judge ruled.
A company manager has been fined $60,000 for neglect, in the last of a series of safety cases involving a teenager's death, a high-level corporate penalty and a former Olympic boxer who was recently jailed for more than a decade in New Zealand.
An employer that was found to have negligently caused a worker to crash his car while driving home from a 12-hour shift has overturned the ruling, with an appeals court finding: there was insufficient evidence to suggest fatigue caused the crash; and the employer had fulfilled its common law duty of care.