The District Court found both the corporate PCBU and its director/officer guilty of s 32 WHS offences arising from the deaths of a skydiving instructor and student caused by a hang-up on an unauthorised aircraft modification. The Court held that the PCBU's duty under s 19 required reasonably practicable steps including ensuring engineering approval for aircraft modifications before operational use, implementing systems to verify buddy checks were conducted, and having documented emergency procedures for hang-ups — and that merely directing a third party to obtain an engineering order without any follow-up or verification was insufficient to discharge the officer's due diligence duty under s 27. On causation, the Court rejected the defence argument that alleged drug impairment of the deceased instructor was a superseding cause, finding on the toxicological evidence that impairment was not established, and held that the obvious snag hazard created by the unengineered step was a significant and substantial cause of the exposure to risk of death regardless of the instructor's exit technique.
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