Browsing: WHS decisions (NSW)

A company has been fined $375,000 and ordered to publish full-page ads detailing its offence in consecutive editions of key building industry magazines, after one of its contract truck drivers died after falling from his truck bed during unloading.

A superior court has awarded $1.35 million in damages to an injured labour-hire worker, after finding the head scaffolding contractor at the site where the injury occurred was negligent in failing to provide an exclusion zone or establish a safe system of work.

A prosecutor that accused a company of committing WHS breaches over a period of seven years, and in a "workplace" encompassing the extensive "Newcastle and Hunter regions" of NSW, has been ordered to detail when and where the alleged offence was committed, and the identify of each worker allegedly exposed to risk.

A PCBU that failed to enforce a system requiring tanks to be pressure tested by a third-party expert has been convicted and fined, after a tank exploded and threw an 83kg metal object onto a public street.

A PCBU has been found guilty of WHS breaches resulting in two workers sustaining serious electric shock injuries from overhead powerlines, with a court rejecting its claim it had been entitled to rely on its crane contractor to operate safely around the cables.

A worker has been granted permission to pursue damages from four companies, including his alleged former employer, with a judge ruling that one of his four serious health conditions could be a dust-induced lung disease.

An employer's anti-bullying and grievance procedures require intervention by a WHS regulator because they lack processes to ensure they are timely and don't cause psychological injuries to those involved, a commission has found.

An employer's failure to ensure a worker didn't need to constantly glance backwards while operating a machine - by, for example, installing a mirror or rear-vision camera - was a breach of its common law duty, an appeals court has found.

A WHS prosecutor has unsuccessfully argued, in an appeals court, that a judge should have addressed the elements of an alleged offence in a specific order, instead of focusing on the foreseeability, or lack thereof, of the actions of a worker who was killed.

• Don't miss the point of safety prosecutions, regulator warns;
  
• Man fined $65k over false high-risk work declarations; and
  
• New safety regulator announced in Vic.