Haulage firm fined £250k over death of worker killed on site

WARD BROTHERS FACED THE SENTENCE FOR HEALTH AND SAFETY OFFENCES

- By GARETH LIGHTFOOT

A HAULAGE firm has been fined £250,000 over the death of a worker who was killed by a falling metal frame in a shipping container. Yard hand Gary Lee James, 30, who did warehouse and forklift truck driving work at Ward Brothers (Malton) Ltd’s depot on Dormor Way, South Bank, was fatally injured by metal clothing frames.

He and his colleagues were “devanning” or stripping frames weighing up to 120kg from shipping containers when he was pinned at the back of a container as five of the heavy racks fell. The worker, of Ida Road, Middlesbrough, was taken to James Cook University Hospital on January 8, 2019.

He died three days later after he suffered asphyxia, cardiac arrest and brain injury. His employer company faced sentence for a health and safety offence after it carried out work it had never done before by “trial and error”, exposing workers including Mr James and a 16-year-old boy to risk of harm.

The hazardous work was done in darkness without hard hats, adequate training or supervision, safe equipment or suitable risk assessments, Teesside Crown Court heard on Friday.

“The defendant — company embarked upon an ad hoc and ultimately unsafe system of work which was not effectively communicated to employees who were left largely unsupervised to determine their own methods,” said Adam Birkby, prosecuting for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

He said employees struggling with the work days earlier were told: “I don’t care how you do it, just get on with it; and to change the frames’ stacking from horizontal to vertical to fit more in a container. Six untethered frames ended up leaning inside the container after it was moved over the Christmas period.