Browsing: Workplace safety court and tribunal decisions | Page 5

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.

A PCBU has lost its last-resort bid to block its WHS prosecution over the drowning deaths of a father and son, with a superior court describing its latest jurisdictional challenge as an "unacceptable fragmentation of the criminal proceeding".

An employer has pleaded guilty to 16 safety breaches and been hit with $545,000 in fines, including over fire safety failures that led to staff using a flammable liquid and cardboard instead of a fire extinguisher to put out a fire on a machine and on two workers.

An appeals court has upheld the acquittals of two PCBUs charged over the hypothermia death of a helicopter pilot, confirming that the "cascading" series of WHS measures they allegedly failed to adopt were not reasonably practicable.

A judge has highlighted the critical roles elected health and safety representatives play in achieving the objectives of WHS laws, and making it feasible for PCBUs to comply with their consultation duties, in fining a Qantas subsidiary for "shameful" WHS discrimination.

A company director who bullied a subcontractor for four years, and abused him for raising safety concerns to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, has been convicted of workplace health and safety contraventions.

A worker who claimed he suffered a back injury from two companies negligently requiring him to carry boxes up stairs has lost his bid for damages in an appeals court.

The final PCBU to be sentenced in relation to the December 2019 Whakaari volcanic eruption, which killed 22 tourists and workers, failed to relay critical risk information, which only it possessed, to its contractors, a court has found.

Five of the 13 entities charged over the New Zealand volcanic eruption that killed 22 tourists and workers in 2019 have been ordered to pay a total of $13 million in workplace safety fines and reparations, in a case providing a "catastrophic example" of what can happen when safety duties are ignored.

A PCBU has been handed a pre-discount fine of $200,000, after two people entered an explosion's exclusion zone, and one of them was forced to dive behind a vehicle to avoid flyrock.