Safety fine tripled as conviction quashed for tendering
Article from OHS Alert 15/08/2024
An employer's workplace health and safety fine has been tripled to more than $400,000 to accommodate its bid to quash its conviction to help it tender for work.
In the first case, the Victorian County Court determined that it could uphold Arrow Worldwide Pty Ltd's appeal against its conviction while also achieving the sentencing purpose of general deterrence by imposing a larger fine on the transport and logistics business.
As reported by OHS Alert early this year, Arrow was convicted and fined $140,000 in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, after it pleaded guilty to contravening section 23 ("Duties of employers to other persons") of the State Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (see related article).
It was charged after a delivery driver who attended its West Melbourne premises to collect an order of heavy steel beams, in May 2021, sustained severe brain and leg injuries when a pack of beams that had been loaded onto his truck fell and struck him.
The worker underwent 15 operations on his legs, which were eventually amputated.
The Magistrates Court heard the pack had been nudged and made unstable by the tynes of a forklift loading the beams onto the truck.
It found Arrow failed to demarcate a driver safety safety zone that ensured visiting truck drivers were segregated from forklifts performing loading and unloading tasks.
Arrow successfully appealed against the Magistrates Court's decision to record a conviction against it, contending this would adversely affect its economic wellbeing, including by limiting its ability to tender for new work.
The County Court concluded that the sentencing purposes could continue to be served by imposing a larger fine on Arrow of $413,050, without conviction.
The County Court stressed that Arrow's breach of section 23 of the Act was objectively serious, and would have warranted an $800,000 penalty if the business had not pleaded guilty.
It found the offending, which gave rise to the risk of serious injury or death, involved unregulated interaction between forklifts, persons and loads, which was notoriously dangerous.
