Company whose employee lost his leg is fined €30,000

A COMPANY that pleaded guilty to charges in breach of the Health and Safety At Work Act in which their employee had his leg amputated was fined €30,000 at Sligo Circuit Court. Castlebar-based Jackson Engineering’s employee Kevin O’Malley’s life was altered forever, the court heard. The Jackson Engineering employee was installing a new crane for Bruss along with two other employees of Jackson Engineering in Finisklin in Sligo when the incident happened. The company pleaded guilty to two sample charges of being in breach of a statutory duty and a regulatory duty imposed by Section 8 of the Act and as a consequence its employee Kevin O’Malley suffered personal injury. The particulars of the pleas were that on September 1, 2018, at G Bruss, Finisklin, Kevin O’Malley was allowed to work in a danger zone beside a free-standing jib of a crane and he suffered personal injury.

The company also failed to ensure that the lift operation on the jib was properly planned or supervised and the jib was unsupported resulting in Kevin O’Malley suffering personal injury.

Kevin O’Malley was standing beside the free-standing jib of a crane when it fell on him crushing his legs during an operation to install the crane in Bruss, Finiskiin in Sligo on September 1, 2018.

In making his ruling, Judge Francis Comerford said Kevin O’Malley was a deeply respected young man with a very good employment record and carried out his work diligently.

He was injured after the jib of a crane fell on him trapping both of his legs which caused him excruciating pain and he had to have his leg amputated.

Judge Comerford said the young man’s life was permanently altered and it had a huge effect on him.

The judges said the two offences are different from others as they were not offences of criminal intent to carry out an act which would do harm on the ground of making a gain or profit for the offender.

The offences were those of omission by failing to take care and the offences were failure, and were not a criminal act.

The evidence of HSA inspector Brian McHugh said the accident was preventable, there was preventable harm that the company did not comply with and had culpability.

But the judge said it was on the lower end of the scale of culpability.

The judge said that installing a crane needed expertise to be done properly and the Bruss Factory in Finiskiin did not have the expertise and would not play any part in it.

It was clear that this task of installing a crane needed expertise and it should have been obvious to Jackson Engineering Castlebar Ltd who had the expertise but did not deploy it properly.

Kevin O’Malley had been making arrangements to organize the installation of the crane and made a method statement which was copied from an earlier system and he had no experience of carrying out the task which was not the correct way.

Also, the company did not have a safe pass for carrying out the operation in Bruss and should have had that pass.

Kevin O’Malley was not under any direction and there was no clear sign as to who was making the decisions on how the install the crane.

A problem arose and the jib of the crane was put standing vertically and unsupported and if someone other than Kevin O’Malley was there, someone with experience, it might have led to the problem being solved and this was a default by the company.

The crane was left in an area in the Bruss factory that was not clear.

The correct way to install would have been to lift the crane with the straps of a forklift and then use a second forklift when the crane was suspended, to slot in and the crane could have been installed correctly.

The jib should not have been put vertically on the ground and it should not then be put standing vertically and was unstable and the installation should not have been carried out in that way.

If a person with experience had been involved, it would not have happened as it was assumed it would have been done in one lift and there was nobody with experience to direct operations. The judge said this was work the company did not do often, but was the kind of expertise they were supposed to have.

In giving Kevin O’Malley the task of installing the crane, they wanted to give him more experience.

They were not cavalier but should have been more careful about how the operation was carried out.

The company was culpable, but it was not huge culpability.

There was no question, but the result of this offence had an awful effect on Kevin O’Malley for the rest of his life, but it would have been a more serious offence had there been a fatality as death is the end of hope. Of course, this did not lessen the harm done to Mr O’Malley. But it was not obvious that this operation was going to end in a severe accident.

The company were not setting up an accident waiting to happen. And while the impact was terrible, a death would have been worse. It was a failure of planning which put the company at the lower end of culpability. In mitigation, the company co-operated fully with the HSA investigation and pleaded guilty during a pandemic where a trial could have been protracted.

The company had an unblemished record since 1994 and had no offences since the matter before the court.

And they took steps to improve their methods after that and have given up work of this nature since the accident. The company had dealt with Mr O’Malley very sensibly with an insurance policy covering his compensation claim and he got redress.

The injured party had taken a civil claim against the company which came to €1.7m and costs and a contribution towards that settlement had been made by Bruss.

And they were diligent in paying him after the accident and also moved the staff canteen from upstairs to the ground floor to help their employee. They were also ensuring that his job was still there for him whenever he would be able to go back to work.

But of course, Kevin O’Malley would give all of his compensation back if he could turn back the clock and had not suffered any injuries. But matters would have been much graver for him if he had not been compensated.

The judge also took into account the fact that the company’s insurance premium had gone up.

He noted the company had suffered in the 2008 crash was heavily in debt, with yearly repayments of €86,000, and could not raise sums in excess of €20,000 without the permission of the Bank of Ireland.

The company accountant Mr Kelly had told the court that there could be a risk that the bank could say the company was not viable and that would be a terrible blow to all concerned.

The judge said he was convicting the company on the second count in the indictment where the company failed to ensure that the lift operation on the jib was not properly planned or supervised and the jib was unsupported resulting in Kevin O’Malley suffering personal injury.

The remaining count was taken into consideration.

The judge said the company would have to pay a fine of €30,000 and that was the court’s ruling.

The court also ruled that the company had to pay costs to the HSA of €3,833.15.

Defence counsel Des Dockery asked for some time for the company to honour the penalty and that they would have to ask the bank for a loan.

The case was adjourned to March 8.