Wolverhampton truck dealership, ATE Truck and Trailer Sales, has had a "manifestly excessive" fine of £475,000 over the fatality of a non-employee working at its yard reduced to £200,000 by the Court of Appeal.
The company was fined in April last year when a self-employed scrap dealer, William Price, was killed while dismantling a trailer on a section of ATE’s yard that he informally rented from the firm. They admitted failing to provide a risk assessment under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 for similar work carried out by its own workers at the site which was judged to have weakened the safety protection available to Price.
However, it had denied a charge covering its responsibilities to those other than workers.
The Court of Appeal ruled that the original trial judge had erred when he decided that ATE’s failings in respect of a non-employee were of "high culpability" and a high likelihood of harm. The three Appeal Court judges recalculated the fine under the sentencing guidelines on the basis of low culpability, arriving at a fine of £200,000.
Price had been associated with ATE for around 20 years, dismantling trucks and trailers and then selling them for scrap. He provided his own equipment and his own forklift truck, and performed his work using his own method, with no involvement from ATE staff. At the time of the accident in February 2013, Price was dismantling around one truck a day. He was crushed between the roof and the side of a trailer and died from catastrophic head injuries.
The Court heard that Price’s method involved balancing the superstructure of the trucks on the tines of a forklift, before cutting the supports that held it to the truck’s base.
At the same time on the same site, ATE employees were carrying out similar work in another section of the yard. Their method, however, involved supporting the frames with a crane that took the weight once the frames were cut free.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had argued that, although the second method was safer than Price’s, ATE’s failure to provide written risk assessments for its employees had an impact on Price’s accident. Before the original trial, ATE’s legal team and the prosecutors acting for the HSE had agreed that although the absence of a risk assessment for its own employees had a bearing on the case, ATE held "low culpability" for the accident.
Judge Berlin however, opted to put ATE’s failings in respect of the written risk assessment in the “high culpability” category.
In the appeal, Lord Justice Gross downgraded the firm’s culpability to low, and with a harm category of two (medium), selected a category range of £14,000 to £100,000. The fact that the case involved a fatality, and the need to calculate the fine to "make an economic impact", then raised the issue to harm category 1. The Appeal Court also took into account ATE's co-operation with the investigation, as well as their good safety record, with over £100,000 spent on health and safety since 2012. An overall "appropriate" fine of £200,000 was decided.
Pinsent Masons, who represented ATE at the appeal commented: "We had always considered that on the facts of this case, the fine originally imposed was manifestly excessive and that the original approach taken in trying to apply the definitive guideline for sentencing health and safety offences had been flawed. This case also has wider application for the way such cases are dealt with, in particular reinforcing that the courts should have careful regard for any agreed position between the parties as there had been in this case".
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