Club owners' £80,000 penalty for lift fall

Prosecutions and Claims |
03.04.2008

Owners of a Liverpool nightclub have been fined £50,000 plus £30,000 costs after a woman fell 9m down an unguarded lift shaft.

Leanna Shearer injured her head and spine and fractured her foot falling from the second floor to the cellar of the Krazy House rock club at New Year's Day 2006. She had mistaken the lift entrance for the way out as she went to leave the club at 2am.

Liverpool Crown Court heard the gate to the goods lift shaft had been left unlocked after staff had been using to it to move staff. There were no warning notices by the gate.

More than two years before the incident, officers from Liverpool City Council had served the club's owners Cashnext with a Prohibition Order stopping it using the lift until it had been overhauled and referring to the risk of a fall down the shaft.

Cashnext admitted a charge of failing to protect Shearer under Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act.