£10,000 fine for worker's death

Steel construction company Finley Structures Limited, on the Aycliffe Industrial Estate, was also ordered to pay £3,500 costs at Teesside Crown Court.

The company, which employs 40 workers, pleaded guilty to an offence under the 1974 Health and Safety At Work Act of breaching welfare regulations.

David Applegarth, 32, a father-of-two, of Lawson Street, Darlington, died last April 15 when he fell three metres from a lorry trailer while securing a load of steel beams. One of the beams fell off the trailer and hit him on the head.

Alec Burns, prosecuting for the Health and Safety Executive, said Mr Applegarth should not have been on the back of the lorry, but he climbed up when there was a difficulty in loading the beams.

Keith Harrison, for Finley Structures, said the company had no previous convictions, and its insurance premiums had risen from £20,000 a year to £70,000 after the accident.

The court heard the three-year-old company immediately designed and constructed a loading platform to prevent a similar accident.

The company had admitted the offence at Bishop Auckland Magistrates' Court in December, and the case was sent to Teesside Crown Court for sentence because the maximum penalty in the lower court was a £5,000 fine.

Passing sentence, Judge Michael Taylor said: "The days of Victorian sorts of conditions which people suffered intolerably in the workplace are thankfully a thing of the past.

"This company have always abided by any advice given to them hitherto, and they were very contrite and put in force any steps to protect their employees in the future.

"I take the view that the fine that was available to the magistrates would be too low to reflect a fatal accident, but I do not think this is a case where I need to go considerably above."

Mr Applegarth's family are suing the company in a civil case, and the judge said he hoped it would be dealt with swiftly to help them to put the tragedy behind them.