Gary Lee James, 30 was working for Ward Bros (Malton) Ltd at its yard at South Bank, in the early hours of 8th January 2019, when he suffered a fatal injury. Mr James and a colleague had been standing up metal frames, each weighing approximately 120kg, within a shipping container, part of what is known as a “devanning” activity.
As the two men lifted the sixth frame, the fifth one fell back towards them, followed by the four others. Mr James was pinned by the neck between the container wall and the fallen frames. Although he was transported to James Cook University Hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest, he was sadly pronounced dead three days later.
An investigation by the HSE found the frames had not been secured to the container wall. It found that Ward Bros (Malton) Ltd failed to ensure, so far is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of its employees, including Gary James, at work in connection with the devanning of containers. Despite the company having never undertaken devanning work before, it failed to create a suitable and sufficient written risk assessment. There was no clear and properly planned safe system of work for its employees. Instead, the company embarked upon an ad-hoc and ultimately unsafe system of work, which was not effectively communicated to the employees who were left largely unsupervised to determine their own methods of devanning the containers.
Ward Bros (Malton) Ltd, of Middlesbrough, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The company was fined £250,000 with costs to be determined at a later date.
HSE Inspector Joy Craighead said, “This was a tragic and preventable incident, that cost a young man his life. Every year, a significant proportion of accidents, many of them serious and sometimes fatal, occur as a result of poorly planned work activity. In this case there was a complete failure to risk assess and implement control measures. Had the company done so, Mr James would still be alive.”
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