Two men injured in work accident claim

Two men received injuries in a work accident claim when the stone staircase they were dismantling collapsed, sending them plummeting to the ground.

The accident claim occurred in September of 2007 when Frank Dever and Paul Irvine were hard at work in Largs where they were performing maintenance at the former Priory House Hotel.  That particular day the two workers were tasked with the removal of a stone staircase by breaking each individual tread with a sledgehammer, as each heavy step weighed anywhere between 120 and 150 kg.

However throughout the course of their demolition work, the staircase’s structural integrity became compromised.  As a result it collapsed, sending the two workers on a four metre fall into the basement of the hotel.  As falling debris followed their swift descent, both workers suffered injury claims – one of them seriously so.

Mr Irvine became trapped under one particularly large stone fragment which fractured three of his vertebrae in addition to every one of his ribs. One of his lungs was punctured in the incident, and he also suffered injuries to his hand and foot.

Personal injury claim experts expect Mr Irvine to seek compensation for his injuries, since many similar cases of serious workplace injury have resulted in court cases as well.

The company that both men had been employed by at the time of the incident, Ossian Construction Ltd, have faced prosecution from the Health and Safety Executive for regulatory breaches that led to the accident. The firm entered a plea of guilty for violating the Health and Safety at Work Act for neglecting to have a safer system in place for their employees whilst engaged in demolition activities.  As a result of the prosecution, they now face a £6,000 fine for the injuries their two employees suffered from the accident.

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