A court has convicted and fined an employer $450,000 for failing to provide a safe workplace, resulting in an "entirely foreseeable" death, and reminded companies that safety laws require them to proactively prevent and address safety risks, rather than waiting for near misses to alert them to dangers.
An appeals court has confirmed that a step's defective non-slip strip, which was missed by safety inspections, remained in place through the negligence of two companies and caused a worker to fall, entitling him to more than $1 million in damages.
A company accused of failing to reassess risk controls, following "material deviations" from earlier assessments, has avoided prosecution by committing more than $1 million to safety initiatives, including a trial of autonomous inspection vehicles.
An employer's work system that required workers to step up onto a platform up to 80 times a day would have involved a breach of duty if an employee had been able to prove the system caused his injuries, a court has found in a case with a seizure and a fall.
A PCBU that was charged with fatality-related WHS breaches, before the case was dropped, appears remarkably lucky to have escaped prosecution, with a coroner identifying numerous safety problems with the machine that caused the death, and finding the killed worker was never provided with proper safety instructions.
A company that failed to ensure a workplace gate was inspected by a qualified engineer, after it was modified, has been fined for exposing other businesses' workers to health and safety risks.
