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A freight company charged in relation to the workplace death of a man in Bluff is facing a court trial six years after the tragedy occurred.
Worksafe charged McLellan Freight Limited, of Balclutha, with two counts under the Health and Safety at Work Act after a man was accidentally struck by a front end loader and killed while working in a shed at South Port.
The dead man’s name is suppressed.
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The charges McLellan Freight faces are failing to ensure, so far as was reasonably practicable, the health and safety of its workers; and failing to co-ordinate activities with other companies, also known as PCBUs, in relation to the work in the shed.
In his opening address in the Invercargill District Court on Monday, Worksafe lawyer Ben Finn said McLellan Freight had a contract with another company to load, unload and store palm kernel at the shed, which South Port was leasing out.
On the night in question, in February 2017, two trucks were carrying palm kernel to the shed after it had been offloaded by ships. Two front end loaders were inside the shed, known as shed 4.
The man, who was employed by another company but doing McLellan Freight’s work, had begun work at 6.30pm, and at 1.30am he drove his truck into the shed to unload palm kernel.
When moving his truck to the exit doors of the shed, he got out and walked to the back of the vehicle, either to blow the excess palm kernel off his truck or to check his truck doors were shut correctly.
“Tragically, while he was there, he was struck by one of the loaders which was reversing at the time,” Finn said.
McLellan Freight had operating procedures for working in the shed which they had written themselves.
Finn said the procedures were intended to provide safe work, but he alleged they were overly dependent on the workers themselves being vigilant and not making mistakes.
Human mistakes were inherently predictable and the key issue for operating safely inside the shed was traffic management, he said.
The set-up inside the shed involved multiple heavy vehicles moving around in different directions and in relatively close quarters to one another.
It also involved the drivers of those vehicles sometimes needing to get out of them while inside the shed.
The judge questioned if Worksafe was suggesting one of the rules should have been that truck drivers not be allowed to get out of their vehicles when inside the shed.
Finn said when the drivers got out to blow excess palm kernel off the back of their trucks before leaving the shed, they were immediately exposed to obvious and serious risks from other vehicles.
“The essence of the case is those risks to workers … were just not adequately managed.”
He suggested the loader driver and possibly the deceased man “did not follow to the letter” the existing procedures, but argued those procedures were not robust enough.
“More needed to be done to ensure the separation of [heavy vehicles] and pedestrians.”
The risks were most acute when multiple vehicles were going backwards and forwards, he said.
McLellan Freight lawyer Brett Harris said he would spend lots of time at the trial looking at the circumstances at South Port and in particular shed 4, which was a transitional facility for biosecurity purposes.
“From the defence perspective that’s really important because it brings with it limitations and restrictions and challenges that will be important for everything that happens going into and within the shed,” Harris told the judge.
The defence was not shirking from the expectations of safety in the workplace, but it was a balancing exercise of what was reasonably and practically possible, he said.
Judge Harvey said the case was an inquiry about what McLellan Freight did and did not do.
“When we deal with the ‘did not do’, we have to assess whether it should have done.”
The judge apologised to the dead man’s family, who were in the public gallery, for the case taking six years to get to trial.
The judge had been horrified it had taken so long when initially finding out, but he added such cases were complicated and Covid-19 had wreaked havoc on the justice system.
The trial continues.
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