Work injury claim news
21/11/2011

York factory worker's second chance at compensation

A York woman injured in a sweet factory accident has taken her £100,000 compensation claim to the Court of Appeal.

The 52-year-old says she injured her back whilst lifting boxes of sweets onto pallets at the Nether Poppleton plant.

Her work accident compensation claim was thrown out of York County Court when expert witnesses said the boxes were too light to have caused her any harm.

They said workers on the production line were required to transfer sweets at the safely achievable rate of nine kilos per minute.

However, at the appeal court hearing, the woman's husband said the judge had been wrong in concluding she was lifting under the ten-kilo safe level.

Speaking on her behalf, he said that staff were made to wait until the boxes were three-quarters full before transferring them – by which time they weighed over 15 kilos.

At this the judge called for an adjournment, pending a further hearing with the company's lawyers present.

"The flaw in the judgment may be that the judge has erroneously assumed that every box was filled every minute with 9.63 kilos," the husband said.

"If, as is the expert evidence in this case, lifting a box of under ten kilos would not cause the injury, but an injury has occurred, it would seem to suggest that the boxes she was lifting exceeded ten kilos in weight."

"It may be, therefore, that the defendants have some case to answer," he added, suggesting the woman's compensation claim could be given a second chance in court.