Legal case

An accident at work occurred and the investigation was concluded with a payment order issued by the competent Government Office's Administrative Department. In the following article, we describe an accident at work and the subsequent official investigation and its outcome.

The basic situation is as follows: A container next to a conveyor belt (feed belt) sunk into the floor of a hall building had to be moved about 5 centimeters. The worker covering the container (who was later injured) was asked by the workplace manager to leave the area. Then, without sounding the horn, the forklift operator moved the container, saying, „Watch out, I'm moving the container!” The person standing behind the container (who was later injured) jumped onto the lowered conveyor belt next to him in response to the movement of the container and, according to his statement, hit his chest at that moment (medical examinations did not find any injuries, „only” recording the complaint as an injury).  

The following irregularities can be identified:

• the injured person did not follow the instructions of his supervisor (according to his statement, he did not even hear that he was being spoken to) Ergo, a statement and a denial concerning the same matter, where the authority only took the injured person's statement into account and disregarded the supervisor's statement;
• the workplace manager did not check whether the worker behind the container had carried out his instructions;
• The forklift operator did not sound the horn as required, but „only” verbally warned those around him and did not take any other measures to ensure that it was safe to start work.

All three employees had participated in occupational safety training prior to the accident and were aware that they were breaking the rules in relation to the three irregularities listed above.

The labor safety inspectorate did not initiate any additions, modifications, sanctions, etc. in relation to the investigation material sent, and accepted it as submitted.

The Government Office's Regulatory Department justified the legal basis for its payment order on the following grounds:

The above-listed rule-breaking behaviors were analyzed using similar logic as in the description of the work accident report that was sent, and practically the same conclusion was reached, with the exception that the three workers were not jointly responsible for the accident (If the injured person had obeyed the instruction to come out from behind the container when asked to do so, the accident would not have occurred), but rather the employer:

„The employer's liability is established by the negligence of its agents alone.”

He then explained this key sentence in his decision with the usual line of reasoning that „a failure to perform a control obligation can be detected.”.  

It is inconceivable to have organized work where, if the employer legally employs the employee, the work is not performed on the basis of some kind of assignment (employment contract, ad hoc assignment, etc.).

In light of the reasoning described above, it makes practically no sense (from the point of view of payment obligations) to investigate accidents at work:

• regardless of whether the employee made a mistake (e.g., was inattentive) and that is why the accident occurred,
• or even injured due to rule-breaking behavior (e.g., suffered an accident by grabbing the V-belt with their hand instead of using the V-belt turning key specified in the manual)
• According to the cited justification, the employer's liability will be established by the fact that the employee performs his or her work on a contract basis (without which he or she cannot perform the work), so the T. Authority will certainly send the payment order to the employer.

Another interesting aspect of this case is that the competent occupational safety inspectorate accepted the accident investigation (the professional inspection), while the healthcare provider issued a payment order.

Author: József Szendrődi