TORONTO — Events at One King West Ltd. and Toronto Standards Condominium Corporation (TSCC) 1703 have been convicted and fined $200,000 after a worker was killed when a freight elevator door fell onto the worker.
Following a guilty plea, both parties, located at 1 King St. W. in Toronto, were fined $100,000 each by Justice Malcolm McLeod in a Toronto court Feb. 25. The court also imposed a 25-per-cent victim fine surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.
On Nov. 15, 2016, a worker employed by Events at One King West Ltd. was assisting in the delivery and set-up of holiday decorations using a freight elevator.
The holiday decorations were unloaded on the second floor and another worker, employed by a film production company to operate the elevator, took it to the third floor.
The elevator stopped short of the third floor, trapping the film production company’s worker, who was able to open the front car door and be pulled out of the elevator, indicates a court bulletin issued by the Ministry of Labour (MOL).
Upon re-entering the elevator, the worker noticed that a black stage cord that had been attached to the front car door was out of sight and reach because the front car door was in the “up” position and the cord could no longer be reached to close the door, the release stated. The black stage cord was a replacement for the original strap usually used to close the car gate door which was broken on or about Oct. 29, 2016.
“When the elevator ascended from the second to the third floor, the black stage cord that was being used as a replacement pull strap on the car gate door got caught on the upper portion of the second floor landing door, and began to pull the upper portion of the landing door up with the elevator car,” reads the release.
The worker employed by Events returned to the elevator to see if anything still needed to be unloaded and appeared to have observed that the top panel of the landing door had opened.
When the Events worker looked into the hoistway opening created by the landing door being pulled apart, the black stage cord snapped and the upper portion of the landing door crashed down onto the worker, causing a fatal blunt impact injury.
Investigations conducted by the MOL and the Technical Standards and Safety Authority found Events failed to ensure that the freight elevator was maintained in good condition, contrary to section 25(1)(b) of the OHSA, and TSCC 1703 failed to comply with section 9(1) of Regulation 209/01 by permitting the elevator to be operated without ensuring the necessary repairs were made, rendering it unsafe.
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed