A woman, who worked at the Chivas Brothers bottling plant in Kilmalid, is to receive compensation for a crushed hand at work injury after a hearing at the Court of Session.
In October 2009, Carol Kennedy from Dumbarton sustained a hand injury while working for the world-famous whisky manufacturer in their Kilmalid bottling plant, when the swivelling wheels of a trolley she was using to transport 380Kg of bottle caps locked after misaligning.
Carol tried to get the trolley moving again by moving to the front of its cage and attempting to pull it through a narrow gap between two autocol machines; however, as she did so, her hand was crushed between the cage if the trolley and one of the machines.
After seeking legal advice, Carol made a claim for crushed hand at work injury compensation – claiming that her employers had not fulfilled their health and safety obligations under the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 and Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.
Carol´s claim was initially dismissed by the Dumbarton Sheriff´s Court in June 2012, but she appealed her claim to the Court of Session and, after a hearing before Lord Drummond Young, Carol was awarded £5,321 in compensation for a crushed hand at work injury.
Lord Drummond found that, as Carol was only 5’ 3” tall and would have had her visibility obscured by the boxes of bottle caps on the trolley, it was “reasonably foreseeable” that there was a risk of injury that the company should have been aware of and acted to prevent.