Forklift News - Building contractor fined for runaway forklift

A building contractor has been fined GBP14,000 (USD26,105) after a faulty forklift toppled a wall and buried a four-year-old boy in rubble (Forkliftaction.com News #187).

According to the Sentinel newspaper, the Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard that Robert Dixon, 54, director of Friog Management Services, left a building site in Cobridge poorly supervised on July 10, 2003.

Health & Safety Executive (HSE) prosecutor Bernard Thorogood said it was fortunate the boy was not killed.

"He was bruised and bleeding. He has since suffered nightmares and woken up shouting, ‘Get off me’," he said.

A 17-year-old employee, who was unqualified to drive the JCB 926 forklift, knocked over a garden wall, which toppled onto the boy who was playing in his backyard.

"The employee said the handbrake did not work and the brakes only worked if you physically stood on them. A nail was used as the ignition key," Thorogood said.

The court heard that when Dixon was told about the accident, he ordered his employees to put the forklift in the driveway of a man he knew and asked the teenage driver to sign a form denying him permission to use it.

Dixon pleaded guilty in November to three breaches of the Health & Safety Act: failure to ensure the safety of people not in his employ, failure to maintain the forklift in good repair and failure to ensure the forklift operator was trained.

Tim Smith, Dixon’s lawyer, said his client has since updated the company’s health and safety plan, now screens employees and sub-contractors on health and safety matters, now trains unqualified employees and now employs a site manager.

Judge William Everard said Dixon started his company fitting windows and possibly "over-reached himself by taking on a much more ambitious project building houses".

"Having initially tried to deflect the authorities from the real truth, the defendant did co-operate. This is not a case where I want a company to go into liquidation as he has no previous convictions," he said.

Dixon was also ordered to pay almost GBP6500 (USD12,120) in costs.

HSE inspector Katharine Walker said it was a very serious case as the child nearly died.

"It is important that companies, through their management structures, take appropriate steps to ensure construction sites are properly supervised and under control, which was not the case in this instance," she said.

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