The death of a Polish banker who was crushed when a lift dropped half a floor as she walked out of it has led to a £233,000 fine each for lift manufacturer and a gym chain.
As the banker stepped out of the elevator at the health club in the City of London, it fell suddenly, trapping her between the shaft wall and the lift and leaving her with fatal injuries.
Southwark Crown Court heard the accident did not happen without warning. The lift had dropped only the day before, yet it hadn’t been taken out of service, though the defendants claimed it had been repaired.
“It has been ‘glaringly obvious’ there was something wrong with the lift for months,” commented the prosecution. In the year before the accident, which happened in March 2003, engineers had been called out to repair the lift 41 times.
A investigation by environmental health officers from the City of London Corporation, assisted by the City of London Police, the Health & Safety Executive, the Health & Safety Laboratory and the lift industry, could not identify a definitive cause for the lift’s failure, though a hydraulic fault or a problem with its mechanisms locking was believed to be behind the accident.
The investigation discovered the lift manufacturer had failed to maintain the lift properly and had neglected to investigate fully its sudden drops between floors.
The gym chain had allowed customers to use the lift even though it was aware it was unsafe and had failed to take adequate remedial action in response to inspection reports. It also emerged that employees had not been given proper training to release trapped passengers from the lift.
Summing up, the judge said that there had been a failure of management and “no proper system of work for highlighting failures”. She said the accident was caused by the “complacency of both defendants”.
On 14th May 2010, the manufacturer was fined £233,000 under section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Etc. Act 1974 for failing to ensure public safety. It was also ordered to pay prosecution costs of £205,000.
The gym was also handed a £233,000 fine with £170,000 in costs after it admitted failing to ensure the safety of customers and employees, contrary to section 3(1) and 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Etc. Act.
The company also pleaded guilty to breaching regulation 5 of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998, for failing to prevent the lift from injuring the deceased.
After the trial, a representative of the manufacturer said the accident was down to a “breakdown of communications and records which led to a confused state”, while the gym said it did not realise the manufacturer “couldn’t be relied upon to do their job properly”.