19 Sep 2015

Payout after gate broke employee's back

9:23 am on 19 September 2015

[b[ A supermarket operator in Dunedin has been fined $44,000 and ordered to pay reparation of $33,000 to a worker, because of an accident last year.

200214. Photo Diego Opatowski / RNZ. Countdown logo

The owner of a Dunedin Countdown supermarket was ordered to pay a total of $77,000 after a workplace incident broke an employee's back. Photo: RNZ

General Distributors runs the Anderson's Bay Road Countdown, where a security gate collapsed on an employee last November, causing compression fractures of several vertebrae and leaving him in a brace for 12 weeks.

The company was sentenced this week in the Dunedin District Court on one charge, brought by WorkSafe, of failing to take all practicable steps to ensure the man's safety.