McDonalds prosecuted over acid injury to worker

December 2, 2010/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Fast food giant McDonalds has paid out more than £20,000 after one of its employees was partially blinded by an acid-based cleaner.

According to Wandsworth Council, the court fine was the result of the first successful prosecution against McDonalds in the UK over an accident in the workplace.

The burger chain was taken to court by the council under safety at work laws after a member of staff suffered burns to his face and eyes that has left him with only around 55 per cent vision in his left eye. The injuries were caused when the man, who was working as a maintenance operative at the company’s Wandsworth Bridge drive-thru restaurant, used an acid-based drain cleaner to unblock a waste pipe.

Last month, South Western magistrates court heard that on June 23, 2008, the employee, with the full knowledge of his manager, bought a corrosive chemical drain cleaner from a nearby DIY store. The first attempt at using the sulphuric acid-based cleaner did not work and so the employee was given money by a manager to buy a second bottle. When this bottle was poured into the pipe, its contents blew back into the employee’s face and both his eyes. He was given first aid at the scene before being taken to hospital by ambulance.

Following treatment he recovered almost all the vision in his right eye but much less in his left eye.

The council’s environment spokesman Councillor Sarah McDermott said: “Their member of staff was given money by his managers to buy a very hazardous product.

“No risk assessment was carried out to ensure this product was safe to use, he was not properly supervised while using it, he was not given any training to reduce the risk of an accident, nor was he provided with protective clothing. This was a serious lapse in the company’s internal procedures.”

A spokesman for McDonalds said: “We are very sorry for the eye injury incurred by our staff member. We regret that on this occasion our stringent safety procedures were not followed and we have taken steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

So, despite Lord Young’s pronouncement that retail environments are basically low risk and his recommendation to government that employers should be allowed to cut back on risk assessment, reality bites back in the shape of a partially blinded worker.

If highly successful ‘public spirited’ firms are committing such breaches of health and safety legislation, we fear for the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of workers employed by small firms when our government seems hell-bent on allowing a laissez-faire attitude to health and safety issues to prevail.

If you have been hurt or injured at work please contact us for a completely free, no obligation review of your case on 0800 163 978.
 

Lord Young of ‘Gaffem’…

November 19, 2010/0 Comments/in , , /by

So farewell then Lord Young of Graffham.

You resigned after you made a gaffe.

You claimed that most people had ‘never had it so good.’

Unfortunately this just isn’t true,

Like much of your ‘Common Sense Common Safety’ review.

Adieu.

‘Bananas’ Bus Slips Up In Bridge Crash

November 19, 2010/0 Comments/in , , /by

A passenger had a lucky escape when a bus hit a low bridge and had its roof sliced off in Edinburgh yesterday afternoon.

The double decker crashed into a rail bridge near Murrayfield Stadium and fortunately the man on the top deck suffered only minor injuries after being thrown into the stairwell by the impact.

Thankfully, the driver and three other passengers on the Go Bananas bus – which is hired out for stag and hen parties – also escaped unhurt.

This incident serves as a prime example of the need for the proper risk assessment of business activities involving members of the public and highlights the dangers of the wholesale watering down of safety standards recommended by Lord Young in his recent ‘Common Sense Common Safety’ report to the government. In his report Lord Young proposed to remove the burden on business by removing the statutory requirement for formal risk assessment across a wide range of commercial and not for profit enterprises because he believed the they were not inherently dangerous and that a proportionate response to health and safety risk was needed.

If a group of guys or girls had been upstairs on this bus at the time of the crash there would have been multiple fatalities and the tabloid press, quick to demonise accident victim compensation claims, would have been clamouring for evidence of route planning, driver training and of course, risk assessment…

Let’s hope the lesson has been learned by all concerned with this incident and that other private and public operated bus operators in Scotland take note that the health and safety of their passengers has to be their prime responsibility. Health and safey legislation is not a burden on enterprise it is a positive engine of business value, not least because the costs to the insurance industry are reduced if we all take care on the roads and elsewhere. At least on this ocassion we are not looking at wrongful death claims in addition to bus and bridge repair costs.

If you have been hurt or injured in an acident on public transport in Scotland within the last three years, please contact us for a FREE no obligation legal review of your case on 0800 163 978.

Cuts to legal aid bill deny workers access to justice says TUC

November 18, 2010/0 Comments/in , , /by

Major government reforms intended to cut the legal aid bill by £350m a year by 2015 will deny many workers injured or made ill by their work access to justice, unions have warned today.

The proposals announced by justice secretary Kenneth Clarke will dramatically reduce access to legal support, with employment and personal injury costs on the government hit list. Mr Clarke said: ‘I believe that the taxpayer should continue to provide legal aid to those who need it most and for serious issues.’ Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly was left to spell out changes to make life easier for defendants. ‘One of our key proposals is reforming the current ‘no win no fee’ regime,’ he said, adding the ‘proposals are designed to prevent the situation in which, regardless of the merits of their case, defendants are forced to settle for fear of prohibitive costs.’

Forgive me if I’m missing the obvious here, but don’t the defendants have their own legal team who fight for their interests? Who, pray tell, is forcing these poor, maligned, fearful and mercilessly bullied corporate behemoths into coughing up when there is no case to answer ‘regardless of the merits of the case’? It certainly isn’t our clients.

Mr. Djanogly’s statement epitomises this government’s attitude to the rights of disadvataged people seeking justice for personal injury. He seeks to demonise and bully accident victims whilst pedling the myth of a nation under seige from legions of fraudulent and spurious compensation claims.

Mr. Clark would appear to have so little faith in the justice system that he thinks the defendants, aka the insurance industry, need a little bit of help to keep their costs down, bless ’em. However, being a man of the people he wants to keep legal aid for those who need it most – well here’s a headline Ken – it’s only those who can prove they need it most, ie. people on very low incomes, who have even the slightest chance of getting legal aid for a personal injury action today.  

TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson said the personal injury system already worked in favour of defendants, pointing out claims had fallen dramatically in recent years and only a minority of those with a genuine case actually pursue compensation. He added: ‘Workers rights to compensation are being attacked on all fronts. When ‘no win no fee’ arrangements for personal injury claims were introduced the government slashed access to legal aid, saying that it was no longer needed. Now, however, they are both reducing workers ability to access no win no fee arrangements and at the same time cutting legal aid even further.’

Rachael Maskell, Unite national officer for the not for profit sector, said what Kenneth Clarke had done was ‘silence the voices of the weak in British society in a brutal bid to reduce his department’s budget by 23 per cent over the next four years.’ She added Unite would redouble the efforts of its Justice for All campaign.

Hear, hear.

If you have been hurt or injured in an accident or have been diagnosed with an industrial illness or disease, you can discuss your case FREE OF CHARGE with a personal injury specialist at Bonnar & Company on 0800 163 978. We will advise you of your rights and give you impartial expert legal advice.

BP now under attack for a ‘culture of complacency’ in oil spill hearing

November 10, 2010/0 Comments/in , , , /by

In stark contrast to the views expressed on Monday by Fred Bartlit, the panel’s chief investigator, new attacks were launched yesterday against BP and the other leading companies implicated in the April oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

Bill Reilly, a co-chairman of the presidential commission investigating the accident said:

“They all suffered from a ‘culture of complacency’ about safety. There was not a culture of safety on that rig. BP, Halliburton and Transocean are in need of top-to-bottom reform.”

The remarks from the panel’s chief investigator, Fred Bartlit, on Monday suggesting that greed had not been a factor in the tragedy and that BP, contrary to the assertions of some Democratic members of Congress, had not cut corners to save money, sparked wonderment and anger in some quarters yesterday.

Most controversial were Mr Bartlit’s comments repudiating the allegations of cost-cutting. “To date, we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favour dollars over safety,” he told the hearing.

“Absolutely absurd,” declared Daniel Becnel, a lawyer suing BP and others over the spill, upon hearing of Mr Bartlit’s assessment. “The reason is it so absurd is because BP is known to paste over safety, especially if it involved money and downtime. They couldn’t afford any more downtime on that rig.”

The presidential commission will present its final report to the White House in January. It is seeking subpoena powers to oblige some key figures to testify, but some Republicans are objecting. The main focus of its probe is the apparently faulty cementing process that was the responsibility primarily of Halliburton and the failure of engineers properly to heed warning signs from a key pressure test that was conducted just prior to the explosion.

The more critical comments from Mr Reilly, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, yesterday were echoed by another co-chairman of the panel, Bob Graham, an ex-US Senator from Florida. “There were a series of almost incredible failures in the days and hours leading up to the disaster,” he told the hearing.

From the comments now emerging from the presidential commission, it seems that the panel is divided on the key issue of cost v safety.

Mr Bartlit’s views have been seriously undermined by the contrasting opinons of Mr. Reilly and Mr. Graham, his co-chairmen, which at least auger well for a full and detailed review of each company’s approach to safety management procedures and the actions of all three in the days leading up to the disaster.