Posted By John Taylor
Can anyone give me an example of how an employee could be prosecuted under H& S legislation and suggest a past case for reference

Posted By Robert Woods
Looking at the safety representatives thread in the study support forum may help.

In general I would say that it is unusual for a worker to be prosecuted for breaches of health and safety legislation normally it would be for horseplay which resulted in someone being injured.

This could also land the employer in the dock for lack of supervision.

One case in point is that of a 17 year old youth who was locked in a toilet at a fertiliser factory by another employee who poured acid on the floor which reacted with fertiliser dust which produced toxic fumes.
The employee was fined £150 for a breach of section 7, with £150 costs and £50 compensation.

For every case like this there are thousands of cases of the employer being prosecuted.


Robert Woods MBAOHSF MHM

Posted By John Allen
Just as well no one wants to write about Arsenal!

To return to the original theme of this thread the prosecution of employees is an interesting topic. When I was a Factory Inspector I was often asked by employers why employees were not prosecuted more often particularly as many accidents appeared to be the fault of employees who failed to follow the safety rules that had been laid down.

I never prosecuted an employee but I did witness a trial in which this happened. The HSW act requires employers to go so far as is reasonably practicable. If an employer has stopped even a little way short of this then it becomes the employee's defence even if the employee has been the architect of his own misfortune.


In retrospect I think the law was designed this way. The employer controls access to work, the system, equipment, pace of work etc. and has the biggest influence on preventing accidents. The employee brings his own skill and commitment to the job and that's about it.


Put it another way - we hear a lot nowadays about the employee having the right to stop the job if it is unsafe but this is a last ditch situation. There must have been a massive failure further back in the system if we get to that situation. The employer's duty cannot be delegated to the employee.

Regards

John

Posted By Brian Dawson
In 1995 a chemistry teacher was fined £1100. The teacher was using a gas jar and deflagrating spoon to demonstrate the effect of burning sodium in an atmosphere of chlorine gas and again in an atmosphere of bromine gas.

His final experiment was to demonstrate that bromine forms an acidic solution when dissolved in water. As the teacher began to wash out the gas jar it exploded (probably because it contained a residue of sodium from the previous experiment). The prosecution stated that Clwyd County Council had issued a Code of Practice to the school regarding practical sessions. The
teacher was not following the Code when the accident occurred. He should have conducted the experiment behind a safety screen and the pupils should have been wearing safety spectacles.

Another teacher was fined £250 with £4,324 costs when demonstrating to 6th Form pupils a casting operation. He (assisted by pupils) poured molten aluminium into a mold when there was an explosion. The teacher and 4 pupils were injured. The explosion was caused by moisture in the mold. The
Prosecution case was that the risks could have been reduced if protective equipment had been used and the pupils were further away. The Defence made points about the protective equipment being inadequate; the risks having not been properly assessed; and that the teacher had not attended any health
and safety training in 20 years at the school. However it was only the teacher that was prosecuted because the HSE inspector said that although there were flaws there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the LEA or the school.

The 7(b) case involved a lecturer in a college. A third year undergraduate student had been attempting to make heterocyclic compound from sodium azide and cyanogen azide. He was working under the supervision of the lecturer. There was an explosion which took off his thumb. The lecturer was charged with failing to co-operate with the college (his employer) in that he caused
the college to break the Management regs by failing to make a suitable and
sufficient assessment of the risks. The judge decided that the Prosecution's evidence would not secure a conviction because it could not be said that the lecturer's risk assessment was not "suitable and sufficient". There were some slightly bizarre aspects to the case: The judge did not have a copy of the Health and Safety at Work Act; and the judge said that he could see "no evidence in law that the risk assessments required by the Health and Safety Act have to be written down" (!).

There was also a case, but I do not have the details to hand, in which a supervisor was injured because a guard was defective. He was on a shift system and there were four other supervisors carrying out the same task in the same work area on different shifts. All four of the other supervisors were prosecuted because they had not reported the broken guard to their employer. (This was
under Section 7(a) well before the Management Regulations).

Posted By Peter Kirton
John

As has been mentioned before prosecutions against employees appear to be extremely rare.

However, I seem to remember a local new item in July?which featured a London Underground Manager. Apparently he was responsible for causing injuries (not fatal) to two men who worked on live rails.

He was found guilty and was fined personally maximum £5,000 and had to pay compensation to the two injured persons. I believe his employers fate will be decided towards the end of this year.

If anyone knows the case and the result of his employers, could you let us know please.

Peter K

Posted By Mark A. Bush
I have found 20 cases of Section 7 HASAWA breaches on the HSE prosecutions database.

Go in to advanced search, act section, 7 and then GO.

You can look at the case details and related cases to see if the employer was also prosecuted.

Interesting stuff. Happy hunting.

Posted By Mark A. Bush
Brian, I think I was missing something. Just done the search again and got 32. At least we are only one away now.

Cases to note are Goodwin, Keating, Masters, Rivers, Nicholls, Hanrahan, Gittings, McKay, Courts and Sutcliffe.

These are certainly the ones I will be using as examples in training.