£250,000 fine for lorry crushing death

Jocelyn Dorrell | Prosecutions and Claims |
09.10.2008

A haulage firm has been fined £250,000 over the death of a driver who was crushed between two lorries during an "utterly dangerous" procedure carried out "on the grounds of convenience, expediency and cost saving".

Jonathan Tiernan, an employee of Pentons Haulage and Cold Storage, died in June 2006, eight months after he was seriously injured at a truck-stop in Featherstone, near Wolverhampton.

In October 2005, Tiernan had met a colleague at the truck-stop to transfer a load of dairy goods from one lorry to the other. Barry Berlin, prosecuting on behalf of South Staffordshire Council, told Stafford Crown Court that Tiernan had been intending to use a pallet as a makeshift bridge to transfer the cargo between the lorries. He was standing behind his parked lorry, waiting for the other lorry to reverse towards it, when he was hit and crushed against his vehicle.

Jenny Rhodes, of South Staffordshire Council's environmental health services, told HSP that Pentons had failed to risk assess this method of transhipping (moving goods between vehicles), and some drivers refused to carry out the procedure because they thought it was too dangerous.

She said the method was convenient and saved mileage, but she wouldn't expect goods to be transferred in this way at all "because it's very difficult to do in a safe manner".

"We would expect them to go to a friendly depot and use a loading bay," she explained.

Rhodes said the reversing light on the lorry that hit Tiernan had no bulbs at the time of the accident - when light was poor - and its audible reversing alarm wasn't working. She added that the company had failed to properly train staff in its transhipping procedure.

Barry Berlin told the court that Pentons "required its drivers to carry out this utterly dangerous activity on the grounds of convenience, expediency and cost saving."

On 7 October, Pentons, of Oswestry in Shrewsbury, admitted failing to take reasonable steps to ensure employees' safety, contrary to Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act, and failing to properly plan, organise and control operations, contrary to Regulation 5 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations.

The company was fined £225,000 for the first breach and £25,000 for the second. On top of the fines, Stafford Crown Court ordered Pentons to pay the council's costs of more than £20,000.

Sentencing, Mrs Justice Rafferty said Tiernan was "the innocent party of a procedure that cost him his life".

Mark Laprell, for Pentons, expressed "sincere condolences" to Tiernan's family and said the incident was not representative of the company's attitude to health and safety. He said the firm had changed its transhipping methods following the accident and employed a health and safety consultant.