By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A gate repair business has pleaded guilty to a workplace safety charge over a truck driver being fatally crushed by a falling gate in Dandenong South.
Gate Automation Systems Pty Ltd however failed in its submission to face lower penalties by being sentenced in the magistrates’ court.
Instead, magistrate Belinda Franjic ordered on 19 December that the case be heard at the Victorian County Court.
It means GAS faces a potential maximum fine of more than $1.6 million – rather than up to $450,000 in the magistrates’ jurisdiction.
Truck driver Stuart Baker, 59, had been killed while attempting to manually close an automatic gate that was being repaired by GAS at Membrey’s Transport and Crane Hire depot in April 2022.
WorkSafe alleged that GAS had left the 12-metre wide sliding gate in an unsafe condition by removing a component without addressing the risk of it falling off the rails and crushing a person.
A GAS worker had removed the gate’s drive-motor to work on off-site. It meant the gate could be opened and closed manually, with the risk of running beyond its stop-close limit and falling off the rails.
Ms Franjic noted that the specialist contractor’s offending was of “high” gravity.
It had not installed an “obvious” control measure – a restraining chain with ‘lock out, tag out’ system to ensure the gate was safe, the court heard.
An expert submitted to the court that this would have been a “standard response” by industry participants.
GAS’s “administrative” control measure to tell the workplace’s general manager to secure the gate with a chain lock and not use the gate was “manifestly inadequate”, Ms Franjic said.
GAS showed a disregard for the unsuspecting workers who would not know of the grave dangers in using the gate.
It was not a “flagrant” disregard but still a serious breach, the judge found.
A defence lawyer submitted that there were doubts whether GAS’s breach directly caused Baker’s death.
The fatal incident occurred three days later and “you don’t know what happened in those 72 hours” that may have broken the chain of causation, the lawyer argued.
Ms Franjic however disagreed, finding there was no evidence of any intervening acts.
She noted GAS’s early plea and lack of prior criminal history.
But given the seriousness, GAS may not be adequately penalised within the magistrates’ court, she found.
GAS pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to ensure persons other than employees were not exposed to health and safety risks.
It will appear at a plea hearing at the Victorian County Court in March.
