Browsing: WHS decisions (NSW) | Page 42

A mining company has been fined $900,000 from a maximum $3 million in the first finalised prosecution for reckless conduct under Australia's harmonised WHS laws.

An employer has been convicted and fined $135,000 after a worker was seriously injured in an incident that could have been avoided by consulting a readily available Safe Work Australia guide. Meanwhile, a company officer has been fined for failing to exercise due diligence to ensure his company complied with its safety duty.

A company and two directors have been convicted and fined $224,000, plus $30,000 in costs, for exposing a worker to a daily risk of serious injury in modified plant, in a case highlighting that an offence can occur without the manifestation of the risk.

A safety prosecutor failed to identify measures an employer could have taken to prevent a worker being killed by 10 tonnes of falling materials, as required by the High Court's Kirk test, the NSW Supreme Court has ruled in an 879-paragraph judgment.

A major employer has been convicted of WHS offences and fined $240,000, plus $51,000 in costs, after a worker was killed when a rusty storage rack collapsed.

A commission has quashed a WHS prohibition notice, after finding a safety inspector made incorrect assumptions about ongoing work at the relevant site, and disregarded an engineer's advice that the site was safe without contacting the expert for clarification.

A worker who was killed when his three-wheeled mobile elevated work platform (MEWP) tipped over, had been required to extend the boom so that he couldn't see the exact position of the wheels near a terrace edge, a coronial inquest has found.

An appeals court has rejected a company and its director's "circuitous" and nearly decade-long attempt to withdraw their guilty pleas and quash their safety convictions, after a raft of breaches led to a worker's death in 2005.

Two employers have received significant WHS fines after incidents involving unlicensed forklift drivers operating without spotters, with a judge describing one as "an accident almost 100 per cent certain to happen".

An employer has been convicted and fined $180,000 for failing to adopt safety procedures that "guard against human error", after a labour-hire worker's fingers were crushed in a press and later amputated.