A director of a company which ran a fleet of lunch vans in Adelaide has been convicted and fined by the Industrial Court today over safety failures which led to the injury of an employee.

George Vlahos had already pleaded guilty to two charges under the Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Act 1986, pertaining to the duties a Responsible Officer has to ensure a company meets its safety obligations, and a failure to report a notifiable incident to SafeWork SA.

The defendant and his partner ran a lunch van business under the corporate entity, Conhos Pty Ltd, which operated ten vans. SafeWork SA took action after investigating an incident in July 2008. The partner, Constantinos Mihalopoulos, received his penalty from the court in May of this year.

On 8 July 2008, an employee recorded in the maintenance logbook that a rear door of her van was loose and rattling. Ten days later at a stop at Camden Park, the employee opened the rear door of her van which then came free and struck her on the head. She was knocked unconscious and suffered a broken nose. The court heard the repairs undertaken were insufficient.

Conhos Pty Ltd was liquidated in April 2010, however SafeWork SA told the court that the defendant and his co-director had:

• as Responsible Officers, failed to ensure a body corporate met its obligations
• failed to provide safe plant and equipment
• failed to ensure the safety of an employee
• failed to ensure the safety of others (namely customers at risk near the faulty van door)
• failed to notify SafeWork SA of a notifiable workplace injury.

In his penalty decision today, Industrial Magistrate Richard Hardy said the heavy doors of the lunch van were used often and posed an obvious risk to the employee and customers:

“…there was an obvious duty to maintain them in a safe condition and the defendant
did not fully discharge it… What work was done was inadequate… He simply did not go
far enough.”

Magistrate Hardy accepted that the offending was “…born out of naivety and ignorance rather than wilfulness”. He imposed a fine of $16,000 after a 20% discount to acknowledge the early guilty plea, cooperation and contrition.

SafeWork SA says even where a company may be dissolved; this case highlights the responsibilities that its individual directors still have to ensure the health and safety of their employees and the consequences that will result if they fail to do so.