An Ontario supervisor has been jailed for 45 days after a worker fell off a roof and suffered permanent paralysis. Are courts growing increasingly comfortable jailing supervisors for serious safety violations?
We wrote about this case in May 2013 after the court found the company, the supervisor and another company representative guilty of charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The court has now imposed its sentence.
According to the Ministry of Labour’s press release, the worker worked for a company engaged in “garbage removal and hauling”. He was removing shingles from a roof, and fell off the roof after tossing loose shingles toward a bin. The worker said that he had not been trained in the use of fall protection equipment, nor was any such equipment provided in the company-supplied truck used for transportation to and from the job site. As well, the worker said that the company’s practice was to pay cash for their work, and that he worked on an on-call basis. The worker identified J.R. Contracting Property Services as the employer and one Teisha Lootawan as the supervisor.
The court determined that J.R. Contracting Property Services was the “employer”. The court also determined that Lootawan was a supervisor under the OHSA. Lootawan had failed as a supervisor to ensure that a worker wore protective devices as required by law, and failed as a supervisor to take the reasonable precaution of ensuring that an adequate form of fall protection was provided where a worker was exposed to a fall hazard of more than three metres.
The court sent Lootawan to jail for 45 days, imposed a $75,000.00 fine on the company, and fined the other company representative $2,000.00 for obstructing a Ministry of Labour inspector by refusing to answer any of the inspector’s questions.
The Ministry of Labour’s press release may be accessed here.
