The District Court found ANJ guilty under s 32 read with s 19(2) of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), holding that ANJ as a PCBU failed to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, that the health and safety of Mr Spinks (a visiting truck driver classified as an 'other person') was not put at risk from work carried out as part of ANJ's business. The Court held that ANJ's failures — including conducting an inadequate risk assessment, failing to develop and enforce an adequate traffic management plan separating pedestrians from mobile plant, failing to provide adequate induction to visitors, and failing to install adequate lighting — were a significant and substantial cause of exposing Mr Spinks to the risk of death or serious injury from being struck by a reversing reach stacker. The reach stacker operator's individual failure to check for pedestrians before reversing did not constitute a novus actus interveniens breaking the causal chain, as ANJ's systemic deficiencies created the very conditions in which the operator's error could result in a fatality.
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