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Court Summary - at a glance

Date of offence:
1 June 2016
 
Plea:
Guilty
 
Decision:
Convicted
 
Final decision date:
 
Fine imposed:
$252,000

Safety lessons learned:
  1. Develop, implement, communicate to forkhoist operators and truck drivers, and monitor compliance with a safe system of work for loading trucks at its site.
  2. Enforce compliance with the requirement that truck drivers remain in driver safe zones (whether permanent or temporary) while their trucks were being loaded, until loading was completed.

Defendant name:
Kuehne + Nagel
 
Industry:
Postal, transport and warehousing
 
Date of offence:
1 June 2016
 
Facts in brief:
The Defendant operates a distribution centre and transitional centre. This was a busy site, with more than 100 trucks coming to deliver or collect goods each day at the time of the incident. These included the defendant’s own contractor truck drivers and drivers from other trucking companies that attended on an ad hoc basis (including Storage and Distribution Specialists Ltd, which attended at the site up to three times per week and employed the victim). The Defendant had only inducted its own contractor truck drivers onto the site, not truck drivers who attended on an ad hoc basis.

On the day of the incident, the victim parked his truck at the site and stood beside it while loading took place. Whilst the loading was taking place the victim noticed an empty space where another truck could park and walked towards the rear of his truck to signal the driver waiting in line to come forward.

The victim then started walking back towards the front of his truck. The forklift driver who had been loading the truck failed to see the victim and reversed into him, pinning his leg and foot to the ground.

The victim was freed by other workers and taken to hospital where he remained for six days. He sustained seven fractures to his left foot and required just under three months off work.
 
 
Offence section:
Sections 48(1) and 2(c) and 36(1)(b) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015
 
Date(s) charged:

Court:
Manukau - District Court
 
Plea:
Guilty
 
Final decision date:
 
Decision:
Convicted
 
Fine imposed:
$252,000
 
Maximum fine available:
$1.5 million
 
Reparation:
$20,000