Company Fined $90,000 After Electrical Worker Critically Injured in Fall from Heights

Apr 22, 2018

A Mississauga, Ontario construction company has pleaded guilty to violating a section of the Construction Projects Regulation following an incident in which an electrical worker fell off a 10-foot stepladder.

The electrical worker was employed by a contractor carrying out all the electrical installations for Santoro Construction Inc. on a Toronto construction site, where the company was constructing a new office building and renovating an existing building.

The May 2016 incident occurred as the worker and a co-worker were tying in and labelling electrical wiring in the ceiling of a renovated office area. While standing on the top third rung of a 10-foot stepladder, the worker reached into an area above the grid of a drop ceiling and fell from the ladder to the floor, suffering critical injuries.

The defendant, Santoro Construction Inc., pleaded guilty to failing to provide a worker with equipment appropriate for situations where work cannot be done on or from the ground without hazard to workers, contrary to Section 125(1) of the Construction Projects Regulation (Ontario Regulation 213/91), which requires a constructor to provide a worker with a scaffold, a suspended work platform, a boatswain’s chair or a multi-point suspended work platform in situations where work cannot be done on or from the ground without hazard to workers.

A separate trial with the worker’s employer, GMJ Electric, and an individual as defendants is scheduled to begin in July 2018.