A NEWCASTLE building company has been fined $300,000 after a contractor suffered a "traumatic brain injury" falling from the back of a truck, six years after another worker was killed in a similar incident.
Bay Trusses and Frames, trading as Bay Timber, pleaded guilty in the NSW District Court to exposing workers to a risk of death or serious injury.
SafeWork NSW took action against the Beresfield-based company after Malcolm Fing fell from the back of a truck while it was being loaded in July 2017, fracturing his neck and suffering a traumatic brain injury.
He has not returned to work.
Mr Fing, who was employed as a truck driver, is the brother-in-law of the managing director of Bay Trusses and Frames, Ian Livingstone, and the men had worked together for years.
The court heard the accident happened six years after another worker, Lance Bligh, died after falling from the back of a truck, loaded with frames and trusses, at a Sydney residential building site.
In her judgement this week, Judge Wendy Strathdee described the company's earlier guilty plea in relation to the death of Mr Bligh as of "great concern" and an "aggravating factor".
"It is apparent that in late 2011 when Mr Bligh died, the defendant must have been on notice that its procedures and systems with regard to work health and safety were lacking," she said.
"The previous offence in 2011, the year Mr Livingstone bought the business, for which the company was sentenced in 2014 looms large in my mind.
"That incident involved the death of a man who fell from either the top of the load on, or directly from the defendant's truck, seems to not have created a sufficient impact on the defendant such that it would appropriately address its safety obligations."
The court heard that in the latest accident, Mr Fing was standing on the trailer of the truck as steel joists were being loaded by a forklift.
"Mr Fing was concerned the steel joists would fall off the truck on the driver's side and moved towards that side to alert any pedestrians," Judge Strathdee said.
"At this time Mr Fing fell from the truck trailer to the concrete surface at the rear of the trailer."
There was no system in place at the company to prohibit drivers climbing on truck trailers while they were being loaded or unloaded.
After the accident, the company spent $8000 putting in exclusion zones at three Beresfield properties to ensure there was no risk to pedestrians in loading areas.
More than $740,000 was also spent on auditing safety procedures and moving the location where trucks are loaded to a new adjacent site, purchased for the $1.65 million, to ensure improved worker safety.
Mr Livingstone apologised personally to Mr Fing and his family, and on behalf of the company.
Judge Strathdee said it was clear the company had a "wake-up call" and described the lengths it had gone to with regard to worker safety since the second accident as "extensive and expensive".
She accepted the "remorse and contrition" expressed by Mr Livingstone and the company as genuine.
"However, it causes me concern that this amount of work was necessary after the incident," she said.
"It also causes me some unease as to what exactly were the systems and processes in place at the worksite prior to the incident, in circumstances where so much was found to be lacking after the incident and needed to be replaced and added to.
"The fact that the systems prior to the incident needed so much rectification does make me question whether the defendant had much regard at all for the safety of its workers prior to the incident."
Judge Strathdee said of greatest concern was the fact this was the company's second guilty plea for putting workers at risk.
"It is apparent that in late 2011 when Mr Bligh died, the defendant must have been on notice that its procedures and systems with regard to work health and safety were lacking," she said.
"Certainly by August 2014, when the defendant was sentenced by this court for the offence that caused Mr Bligh's death, the defendant must have understood that its work health and safety procedures were most inadequate.
"Yet, less than three years later, Mr Fing fell from one of the defendant's trucks and was badly injured."
Judge Strathdee fined the company $400,000, but reduced the penalty by 25 per cent due to an early guilty plea.
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