A company director charged over a forklift incident was recently cleared by a court of breaching his WHS due diligence duties. In this article, his lawyers explain the reasons behind the decision, and what it says about the reach of officers' safety obligations.
An employer has been convicted and fined after a worker's leg was crushed by moving equipment with an alarm he couldn't hear over other noise and through his hearing protection. The employer had assessed such an incident as "almost certain" to occur, but didn't take any steps to prevent it.
Adhering to readily available Safe Work Australia guidance would have helped a PCBU prevent an incident where a worker fell through a penetration after mistaking its cover for spare plywood, a court has found in convicting and fining the business $450,000.
An employer has been fined $800,000 for WHS breaches, after a designated work site migrated onto a dangerous stretch of road and a worker was killed by a vehicle driven by a colleague.
A PCBU exhibited "multiple failures at management levels" to respond to violent workplace incidents, which escalated after it accepted additional high-risk clients and led to workers being assaulted, a court has found.
A worker who allegedly slipped on a soapy floor with no "wet floor signs" has been permitted to a sue a major employer for damages, with a court finding the employer's bid to block her case wasn't helped by a policy of overwriting CCTV footage every two weeks.
A court has found a PCBU guilty of WHS breaches after a worker was hit by a forklift, but ruled its failure to separate forklifts and pedestrians was not a failure directly linked to its director's due diligence duties.
A PCBU has been handed a pre-discount WHS fine of $400,000, after a worker was fatally struck on the head while performing maintenance work on a machine at a site that was subject to multiple improvement notices.
