Convicted: J.M. Lahman Manufacturing Inc., 5467 Ament Line, RR1, Linwood, Ontario, a company that manufactures steel tubing.
Location of Workplace: 3617 Lichty Road, Linwood, Ontario (Township of Wellesley, northwest of Kitchener).
Description of Offence: A child was killed in a factory when bundles of steel tubing fell.
Date of Offence: July 6, 2017.
Date of Conviction: November 13, 2018.
Penalty Imposed:
- Following a guilty plea, J.M. Lahman Manufacturing Inc. was fined a total of $150,000 by Justice of the Peace Michael A. Cuthbertson in Kitchener court; Crown counsel Wes Wilson.
- The court also imposed a 25-per-cent victim fine surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.
Background:
- Section 66(4) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) makes any act of a supervisor the act of the employer.
- The workplace is a factory as defined in the OHSA and section 4(1)(b) of the Industrial Establishments Regulation (Regulation 851) prohibits the presence of persons under the age of 15 in a factory unless accompanied by an adult.
- A worker/supervisor for the company was attending at the facility, accompanied by two children.
- One of the children was moving freely through the aisles of the facility unaccompanied.
- The worker used a crane to place three bundles of steel tubing on top of a stack of similar bundles. The three bundles had been left over from the day’s work. Each bundle of tubing weighed approximately 2,140 pounds. The total weight of the stack was estimated to be 15 tons.
- The stack of bundles dropped and collapsed. The stack fell onto the child who had been moving about and the child was killed instantly. The other child was far enough away as not to be harmed.
- A Ministry of Labour engineer determined during the investigation that the use of softwood spacers between the bundles and the use of insufficient numbers of bands to hold the tubes together contributed to the collapse. There may have been other factors as well.
- A fine of $100,000 was imposed for permitting a person under the age of 15 to be in a factory.
- A fine of $50,000 was imposed for failing to ensure that bundles of steel tubing were placed and/or stored in a manner such that they could not tip, collapse and/or fall as required under section 45(b) of the regulation.-
Ministry of Labour