Montracon fined for employee death
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MONTRACON HAS been fined £100,000 after a trailer being towed out of the firm’s factory knocked a steel machine from overhead brackets, which fell onto and killed an employee.
In a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecution, Hull Crown Court was told how Ronald Wood, 59, a driver and long-term worker at Montracon, was standing underneath the 6m steel vacuum lifter with a colleague at the trailer manufacturer’s facility in Market Weighton, East Yorkshire in September 2009.
At the same time, the large trailer hit the brackets, dislodging the lifter and knocking it from its mountings.
The machine, which weighed two-thirds of a tonne, fell more than 3.5m, hitting Wood on the head.
Wood never regained consciousness and died in hospital the same day, while his fellow worker escaped with only minor injuries.
Montracon, which had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to two breaches of health and safety legislation, was also ordered to pay £33,030 in costs. It was unavailable for further comment as CM went to press.