On 21 February 2025, the Brisbane Magistrates Court fined a restoration company $80,000 after a worker fell from a mezzanine and suffered paraplegia. The company pleaded guilty to breaching its primary health and safety duty under section 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld). No conviction was recorded.
The incident occurred on 14 August 2023 at a warehouse in Aspley, Queensland. Workers employed by the company were carrying out cleaning work on a mezzanine level approximately 3.2 metres above the concrete floor.
A worker stepped backwards while facing away from the edge and fell to the floor below. The worker was taken to hospital and suffered serious injuries, with paraplegia identified as the most significant injury.
What the court found
The company’s failures were identified in three areas:
- It did not ensure a risk assessment was completed before work started.
- It did not ensure a request was made for edge protection to be installed.
- It did not prohibit workers from accessing the mezzanine until appropriate controls were implemented.
The failures exposed the injured worker and three other workers to a risk of death or serious injury. The sentencing court accepted that the potential consequences were catastrophic and that the risk of serious injury was foreseeable.
The court also accepted that the risk could have been minimised or avoided if the company’s procedures had been followed. The company had systems intended to control the risk, had no prior history, pleaded guilty and took steps to improve safety after the incident. The court accepted that the company was not showing a flagrant disregard for its responsibilities, but that its systems had failed in this instance.
The company was fined $80,000. It was also ordered to pay $1,500 in professional and legal costs and a $101.40 filing fee. The fine was referred to the State Penalties Enforcement Registry. No conviction was recorded.
Why this matters to business managers
A documented safety system does not, by itself, demonstrate that a business has controlled a critical risk. Managers and supervisors need to ensure that the system is applied at the workplace before work begins and that workers are prevented from proceeding when essential controls are missing.
Falls from height can produce life-changing consequences even where the work is short, routine or undertaken by experienced workers. In this matter, the work involved cleaning, but the location and unprotected edge created a foreseeable risk of serious harm.
The case also demonstrates that a failure can affect more than the person who is injured. Three other workers were exposed to the same risk, although they were not injured.
Practical controls for work near edges and elevated areas
Businesses should consider whether their arrangements require managers and supervisors to:
- identify fall hazards before allocating or starting the work;
- complete and review a task-specific risk assessment;
- confirm that edge protection or another suitable control has been installed before access is allowed;
- clearly assign responsibility for requesting, checking and approving controls;
- prohibit work on an elevated area when required controls are absent or incomplete;
- brief workers on the hazards, exclusion arrangements and stop-work requirements; and
- verify that procedures are being followed at the actual worksite, not merely stored in a safety management system.
These steps should be suited to the work and the site. A control that has been planned but not installed or verified should not be treated as an effective control.
What managers should take note of
The key lesson is to treat falls as a foreseeable critical risk, not as a routine task detail. Before work starts, the responsible manager or supervisor should be able to answer three practical questions:
- What could cause a person to fall?
- Which controls are required before anyone enters or works in the area?
- Who has authority to stop the work if those controls are not in place?
Where the answer to any of these questions is unclear, work should not proceed until the risk is assessed and the required controls are confirmed.
Source information
- Regulator: Workplace Health and Safety Queensland
- Source type: Regulator summary
- Court: Brisbane Magistrates Court
- Decision date: 21 February 2025
- Incident date: 14 August 2023
- Publication date: Not available in the supplied source
- Source URL: https://www.owhsp.qld.gov.au/court-report/company-fined-80000-after-worker-falls-height-and-suffers-permanent-injuries
The supplied evidence is a regulator summary. No court judgment or sentencing remarks were attached.