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| USA, August 18th 2008 |
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| Foster's fined for workplace death |
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A 58-year-old man was crushed between the pneumatically operated door of the machine that removes bottles from pallets before they are filled and a handrail and died six days later in hospital.
Judge Jane Campton brought down a conviction and imposed a A$1.125m ($983188/€666,526) fine on the company, Australia’s biggest brewer, and owner of a wine portfolio that includes Penfolds.
Foster’s pleaded guilty to two charges under the Act, each of which had provision for a maximum fine of A$943,000. Judge Campton said that the guilty plea convinced her to reduce the fine from A$1.5m; however, counting against Foster’s, according to the Judge, was that there had been a similar incident on a near-identical machine nearly three and a half years previously, though that had not been fatal. According to Judge Campton, this meant that “Foster’s failings were at the higher end of the scale”. Foster’s had made improvements to the offending machine involved in the earlier accident but not to the machine was caused the later fatality.
Since then, Foster’s have made safety improvements to the relevant machines, costing A$3.9m and put better staff training in place. While the amount of the fine was a record under current legislation, under the previous 1985 Act, oil and gas company Esso had been fined A$2m after its 1998 Longford Gas Plant explosion.
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