A1 Arbor Tree Services Pty Ltd has been convicted and fined $2.025 million dollars in the NSW District Court over the death of a worker who was killed while using a woodchipper in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The multi-million-dollar penalty is the single largest court imposed fine for a business in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court heard on 7 September 2019, A1 Arbor Tree Services was in Lindfield to remove trees from the grounds of a local school, where a 40-year-old victim, a Fijian national, was fatally injured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court heard A1 Arbor did not complete a risk assessment of the equipment, which had several defects. The court also heard there was little supervision of workers and workers did not receive training to operate the equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A1 Arbor Tree Services Pty Ltd pleaded guilty to failing to comply with its safety obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her Honour Judge Strathdee noted during sentencing on 14 July the foreseeable harm to the 40-year-old man was extreme and determined the record $2.025 million fine was appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A1 Arbor has a right to appeal the decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Minister for Work Health and Safety Sophie Cotsis said:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy heart goes out to the family and friends of this 40-year-old worker who didn\u2019t make it home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is yet another shocking fatality that was completely unavoidable. The lives of workers must be priority number one. No excuses, no exceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a landmark conviction that puts everyone across NSW on notice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A1 Arbor Tree Services Pty Ltd has been convicted and fined $2.025 million dollars in the NSW District Court over the death of a worker who was killed while using a woodchipper in 2019. The multi-million-dollar penalty is the single largest court imposed fine for a business in the state. The court heard on 7 … Continue reading “Largest fine issued over woodchipper death”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21851,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21850\/revisions\/21851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}