Haydyn Charles Grubb: Kalgoorlie’s Monadelphous Engineering Associates fined $685k for worker’s death

An engineering company has been fined almost $700,000 for contravening health and safety laws that ultimately led to the death of a “vulnerable employee”. Haydyn Charles Grubb was aged 26 when he was killed at the Kalgoorlie workshop of Monadelphous Engineering Associates Proprietary Limited on March 7, 2020. On Wednesday, the company was handed a $685,000 fine in the Kalgoorlie Magistrates Court after previously pleading guilty to a charge of failing to provide and maintain a working environment in which employees were not exposed to hazards. Mr Grubb, who had been working at the company less than three months, was acting as a “spotter” while a fellow employee moved a pot straightener frame with a telehandler across the yard. It was something Mr Grubb had watched his supervisor demonstrate without incident the day prior and he had been instructed to enter within 3m of the telehandler on that day. However, as he guided the telehandler to the wooden gluts, the frame tipped forward and crushed him. He was transported to hospital but died of head injuries. Magistrate Paul Lyons said his responsibility in sentencing was to balance technical components of the offending “dispassionately” and stated his sentence would likely provide “only limited comfort” to friends and family of Mr Grubb. He said that what happened to Mr Grubb was a “tragedy”. “He should not have died, he was entitled to be safe at work,” Mr Lyons said. He said that on the day of Mr Grubb’s death, no 3m exclusion zone had been put in place around the telehandler and the frame had not been tethered down. The prosecution and defence had previously disputed whether a 3m exclusion zone around A telehandler carrying heavy objects, but not suspending them, was common practice. With no evidence provided by the defence to show it was common practice in the industry, Mr Lyons ruled against that submission. However, he agreed exclusion zones were a simple and cost-effective measure that could be used to prevent injury and death where hazards were present. He also stated the offender would not be oblivious to the inherent dangers moving heavy objects around a workplace would pose to people “in the line of fire”. Mr Lyons said Mr Grubb was vulnerable due to his age, the fact that he had worked there for less than three month and because he had seen his supervisor act in a similar manner the day prior. He also ruled deterrence was of higher importance to the employer as they had previously been convicted of another workplace safety breach. Mr Lyons ruled that the March 7 offence was not at the upper end of the scale of seriousness but was above mid-level offending as submitted by the defence. He said the company had shown genuine remorse and had since implemented procedures to address new steps to prevent this from happening again. In addition to the $685,000 fine — not payable to the family — Mr Lyons awarded prosecution costs of $21,413.