Browsing: WHS decisions (VIC)

Despite the fact that an employer was negligent in the way it managed an injured worker's return-to-work plan, a superior court has confirmed this negligence wasn't the cause of her subsequent anxiety and depressive illness.

A coronial inquiry into the death of a recently immigrated worker has highlighted the very real dangers faced by inexperienced workers and posed by power tools, particularly tools with unsafe modifications or faults.

A company director who failed to ensure his organisation provided fall prevention measures to height workers has become the third entity to be fined over a five-metre fall, while a regulator has expressed frustration after yet another employer was fined for forklift-related breaches.

WorkSafe Victoria has won a preliminary legal skirmish in a case that will consider the powers of its inspectors to control sites and issue clean-up orders based on concerns over public or workplace health following dangerous chemical spillages.

A manager's comments about a subordinate's body shape, even without intended s-xual innuendo, constituted s-xual harassment and caused the subordinate's post-traumatic stress disorder, a tribunal has found in awarding her damages.

A "lack of supervisory control" and the repeated failure to detect and report faults "represented an opportunity lost" to prevent a worker's death from being crushed on a mobile elevated work platform (MEWP), a coronial inquiry has found.

A company has been fined after a workplace health and safety inspector observed two of its apprentices performing electrical work on their own. Meanwhile, Western Australia's average workers' comp premium rate has been increased for the second year in a row.

The High Court has found a lawyer's tasks were so "inherently and obviously dangerous to the psychiatric health" of employees that her employer, the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions, had been duty-bound to proactively implement the protective measures identified in its policies.

• Council fined over notifiable-incident error; and
  
• Asbestos safety and SRC rules amended by legislative instruments.

An employer and a site occupier have both been found negligent over a tag-out failure that resulted in a defective platform being used, causing a worker to suffer an incapacitating back injury.