A magistrate "impermissibly reasoned backward", and misapplied the reasonable practicability test, when she found an employer guilty of amputation-related safety breaches and fined it nearly $200,000, a superior court has found.
Employers that don't fully understand the circumstances in which they can terminate workers for safety breaches can face serious ramifications, but ensuring workers are properly trained is one of many steps they can take to ensure a decision stands up to scrutiny, a leading safety lawyer says.
In a case involving a charity drive and entry breaches, the Federal Court has rejected a regulator's assertion that workers' subjective "feelings" about how safe their sites are can't justify a stoppage.
A principal contractor that failed to act on a union's height-safety warning has been fined $450,000 after a worker was killed, with a court lambasting its director for failing to take personal steps to protect workers.
An employer that could have prevented a fatality by using more appropriate machinery for a high-risk task has been fined $650,000. Meanwhile, an individual has been fined for failing to prepare a health and safety coordination plan, which contributed to a three-metre fall.
A fatal work vehicle explosion was triggered by an exposed wire in a storage compartment containing a gas cylinder, which wasn't stored in accordance with the relevant Australian Standards, codes of practice or safety data sheets, an inquest has found.
A PCBU and its director have escaped prosecution for fatality-related category 2 WHS breaches because of "evidentiary issues", but have been convicted and fined for failing to cooperate with the investigation into the death.
Allowing untrained and unsupervised workers to perform manual tasks in close proximity to unguarded moving machine parts was a "significant departure" from the obligations imposed on employers by WHS legislation, a court has ruled in an amputation case.
A PCBU has been fined after an inexperienced teenage worker's fingers were amputated, just months after another worker was killed at the same site. Meanwhile, a worker has been awarded nearly $1.4 million after he was seriously injured moving 250kg slabs on his second day on the job.
