A acquitted CEO but a guilty company, this is the meaning of the decision pronounced this Monday by the Senlis criminal court in a case of involuntary injuries occurring in the professional context.
On March 21, 2019, firefighters intervened in the evening at the company SAS BIO Ancienne Blanchisserie Industrielle de l'Oise in Creil, a textile factory for the medical world.
That day, a line driver was injured while trying to clean traces of glue on a machine still in operation; his hand was caught by rollers.
If the worker was able to stop the machine thanks to an emergency stop system, the man left three fingers severed by the device.
Several security breaches
Four years later, the victim has not attended the hearing regarding this case.
The former BIO employee did not even file a civil suit, because as he wrote to his former boss “he does not blame the company for this accident”.
For the labor inspectorate, there remain several shortcomings in terms of safety, highlighted in a report, at least one of which will attract the attention of the court.
On the side of the machine, a safety barrier was removed a few days before the accident, pending the arrival of a new machine which would have filled this space.
It was precisely through this side that the employee was able to access the rollers, which he had not been able to do on the other side of the device, where the protection was still in place.
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“The absence of this grid does not explain the accident,” said the company boss in court.
I still don't understand the action of the line driver, who knew that the machine had to be stopped for cleaning.
I was deeply affected by this accident and we offered a reclassification solution to the injured employee.
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“The accident would not have happened if the protections had been in place,” insists the deputy prosecutor.
And this, even if the behavior of the injured employee is not exempt from all reproach, which he himself admitted.
» The court went beyond the requisitions with regard to the company, by doubling the amount of the fine which had been requested by the prosecution to bring it to 20,000 euros in fines.