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Haulier has sentence cut
Page 12
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Boss of firm that abused employee wins appeal. Jennifer Ball reports.
A SHEFFIELD haulage boss who failed to stop a campaign of racial abuse against a black employee has had his jail-term slashed by the Court of Appeal.
Damien Gaunt, MD of Bruce Transport Services, was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment at Sheffield Crown Court for turning a blind eye to his employees' actions against Rudolph Watson, who was stabbed with a chisel, tied to a moving fork-lift truck and suffered a torrent of verbal abuse during his two years' employment at the firm ( CM 18 September).
Three other workers,Gary Bolsover. Brian Briscoe and Kirk Lee, were also jailed for their involve ment in the "campaign of relentless. remorseless oppression".
Cutting Gaunt's sentence to six months, Justice Sir Ian Kennedy ruled that the trial judge had come to the conclusion that the defendants before him should be treated equally:"In doing that.he lost sight of the point Gaunt stood in a different position to his co-accused. Not in the sense that he didn't do anything. but in the sense that he knew a very small part of what was happening."
There was no evidence that Gaunt was a bigotthe judge added; he was a man of previous excellent character who had worked hard to build up the business.