Disney fined £1.6m after Ford’s leg is crushed on Star Wars set
A PRODUCTION company owned by Disney has been fined £1.6million after Harrison Ford was crushed by a door on set.
The 74-year-old was filming Star Wars: The Force Awakens when the door of the Millennium Falcon spaceship came down on him like a ‘blunt guillotine’ – breaking two bones in his leg.
Foodles Production (UK) Ltd, which was set up specifically to create the movie, was sentenced yesterday after admitting two breaches of health and safety law. Judge Francis Sheridan said the way the door was operated – by someone who could not see the actor – was a ‘crazy approach’.
He added: ‘Had the wrong button been pressed it would have continued to crush down on Mr Ford. It’s just incredible that so much was left to chance.’ The actor was reprising the role of Han Solo at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, when the drama unfolded in June 2014.
At an earlier hearing, prosecutor Andrew Marshall said Ford had
‘Capable of killing people’
passed under the hydraulic door on the set of the Millennium Falcon during a dress rehearsal.
He then went to walk back through the doorway, believing it would stay open as it had during previous runthroughs. But Mr Marshall said it acted like a ‘blunt guillotine’, coming down ‘millimetres from his face’ and pinning him to the ground by the pelvis. Staff pushed an emergency stop button – but as the door took just 1.6 seconds to close, they could not prevent it closing with ‘enormous’ force and stopping about 90 per cent shut.
Ford needed surgery to screw together fractured bones in his left leg, and plastic surgery on a ‘deep laceration’ on his left hand. Mr Marshall said the door was ‘capable of killing one or possibly two people’.
He added: ‘The risk was foreseeable – it was significant and dangerous.’
According to the Health and Safety Executive, the power of the rapidly-closing door meant that Ford was hit with a force comparable to the weight of a small car.
Judge Sheridan told Aylesbury Crown Court that the company had failed to warn of the dangers. He added: ‘The greatest failing of all on behalf of the company is a lack of communication – because, if you have a risk assessment and you do not communicate it, what is the point of having one?’
Ford received a compensation settlement that the judge said he would assume was ‘large’ due to Ford’s serious injuries. Charles Gibson QC, defending, admitted there had been a ‘failure in communication’.
He said: ‘This was an innocent mistake by bona fide professionals. Lessons were learned.’