Vaughan
November 17, 2008 01:55 PM
Joe Fantauzzi, Staff Writer
A York Region company, considered a major player in the Greater Toronto Area construction industry, was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars last week in the 2005 death of a worker.
On Wednesday, Vaughan-based Con-Drain Company (1983) Limited, better known simply as Con-Drain, a sewer and watermain contractor, was fined $250,000 in a Newmarket court after the company was convicted of failing, as an employer, to ensure that signs warning workers about reversing vehicles were posted in conspicuous places at a construction project in Vaughan, according to provincial Ministry of Labour news release.
Court heard that on March 2, 2005, a Con-Drain employee, whose name was not released by the ministry, was working on the installation of sewer lines in a new residential subdivision on Via Campanile, near Pine Valley Drive and Rutherford Road, in Woodbridge.
The worker was standing behind a crawler crane — a type of moveable crane, which weighs 54.4 metric tons or nearly 120,000 pounds — being used to transfer and lay pipe in a trench and talking to another employee when the crawler reversed and ran over him, the ministry said.
The worker was pronounced dead at the scene.
In addition to the fine, the court imposed a 25 per cent victim fine surcharge on the total, required by provincial legislation.