Owner has to pay more than £12k after apprentice fell down stairwell

Saturday 17 February 2018

The owner of a joinery company has been fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £2,500 in compensation, after his apprentice fell down an open stairwell.

John Paul Horgan, who owned Unit 6 Joinery Limited, was charged with breaking the Health and Safety law after one of his employees fell three metres through an open stairwell on a construction site, where Horgan was living, on 5 April 2016.

18-year-old Jordan Flageul worked for Horgan as an apprentice joiner on a property in St. Peter when he had the fall, which left him with a number of fractures and needing surgery to fix a metal plate on his upper arm.

The Royal Court heard that Horgan did a ‘walk through’ of the site with his foreman before he left to go to the company’s workshop. Together they discussed the work needed on the stairwell, which included removing a ramp to the first floor and boards covering the hole and placing a scaffold tower beneath the void - which was outside at the time - where the new staircase would be.

During an investigation of the incident, the foreman said Mr Flageul was having difficulty installing the insulation on the first floor, so he instructed him to sweep the floor on the left hand side instead, to keep him away from the stairway opening. Both the foreman and another employee said Mr Flageul was told on four separate occasions to stay away from the stairwell – with him being physically moved at one point.

The Prosecution said appropriate precautions to control the risks of the open stairwell during the work weren’t taken and that employees were just given a “verbal warning” of the danger.  

Advocate Richard Pedley said the Crown believed there was little planning of the work to be undertaken, and instead there was a reliance on employee’s ‘common sense’ which he labelled as high risk, unacceptable and below basic legal requirements. He also told the court that Mr Flageul’s training had been limited to workshop based machinery and not to high-risk construction work and risks of working on a site as Unit 6 was primarily a woodworking and joinery company. Advocate Pedley requested a fine of £15,000 as well as compensation to the victim.

Defending, Advocate Adam Harrison said Unit 6 was “winding down” at the time of the incident due to financial losses – which has led to the closure of the business in May 2016. At the time Horgan was starting up his next construction company which was also doing the work on his property in St. Peter.

He said both Horgan and Unit 6 had no previous records of incidents, and the “incident not a consequence of Horgan taking labourers and putting them on site, they were construction workers.”

Advocate Harrison suggested the stairwell opening was uncovered for a “relatively short period of time” and that Horgan had taken immediate steps to remedy the situation.

The Deputy Bailiff, Tim Le Cocq, said, “it’s not clear how or why [Mr Flageul] fell, but it is clear the tower had not been put in place or a safety barrier.” He added Horgan had, “fallen short of the appropriate standard of care” and he had made, “no allowances for the maturity of the victim’s work experience.” He also said it wasn’t clear if health and safety policies had been done.

The Deputy Bailiff told Horgan that he felt the fine amount requested by the prosecution was too high saying “yes there were failings…but not serious failings.”

Horgan has been given six months to pay a fine of £10,000 and £2,500 compensation to Mr Flageul.