After sustaining an injury that saw her hand crushed at a napkin manufacturing plant, one Merseyside woman may bring a work accident claim against her employer for personal injury compensation.
St Helens native Cheryl Bridge, forty three year old mother of three, had been working on cleaning two printing rollers for Emboss (Europe) Ltd when her right hand was pulled into the rollers’ inward running nip after her cleaning cloth was pulled into the press, accident claim experts report. The rollers crushed Mrs Bridge’s hand, and as a result three of the fingers on her right hand were irreparably damaged and lost, rendering her completely unable to work as well as no longer capable of the performance of many everyday tasks such as cleaning or cooking.
Shortly after the incident, the Government’s Health and Safety Executive launched an investigation, revealing that Emboss (Europe) Ltd routinely allowed the rollers on the press to be cleaned whilst the machine was turned on and operating at high speed. The HSE also discovered that the guard on the machine, which was especially designed to prevent things from slipping between the two high speed rollers, had been quite ineffective since it had been hanging off to the side of the printing machine.
St Helens- based Emboss, of Cornwall Street, admitted to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act at a hearing in Liverpool Crown Court. As a result the court ordered the firm to pay a fine of £30,000 as well as told to pay court costs of £12,549.
Official figures show that in 2010 alone, nearly 4,000 employees in the manufacturing sector sustained serious injuries in work accidents. A full 25 of these incidents proved fatal for the workers, it was also reported.