Site Death Fine Increased Eight-Fold

[brothermagrew]

Site death fine increased eight-fold
A building firm has had a fine following the death of a worker increased eight-fold by appeal court judges in Scotland. Discovery Homes (Scotland) Ltd was originally fined £5,000 after admitting a criminal safety breach (Risks 410). However, following a Crown appeal the sentence was increased to £40,000. Bricklayer Andrezej Freitag, 55, died on 29 May 2008 after falling down a shaft from the third to the second storey of a block of houses under construction in Dundee. After the company was fined last year at Dundee Sheriff Court, the Crown decided to appeal claiming the sentence was unduly lenient. The sheriff at the original hearing had said he would have fined the firm £7,500, but reduced it following the guilty plea. He said he would have normally imposed 'a very substantial fine' but was under the impression that would almost inevitably lead to the firm going bust. The Lord Justice General, Lord Hamilton, who heard the appeal with Lord Kingarth and Lord Carloway, said: 'What he did not, however, appreciate was that, on the face of the accounts, there was a mechanism by which the firm could, over time, meet a much more substantial fine than pounds £7,500 without inevitably being forced into administration or liquidation.' The senior judge said the building company had built up substantial profits which allowed it to pay its two director-shareholders £50,000 a year each. The Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh agreed to give the firm time to pay with the company's counsel, Gavin Anderson, offering £5,000 a month. The judges rejected a Crown bid to increase a fine of £4,000 imposed on Discovery Homes director Richard Pratt following the incident. Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK), a campaign run by relatives who have suffered a workplace bereavement, protested to then-prime minister Gordon Brown about the original sentence.

http://www.tuc.org.uk/h_and_s/tuc-18015-f0.cfm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Scottish Appeal Court Judgement: http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2010HCJAC47.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;