Company claimed worker wasn’t following procedure when he tripped over pallet on floor
Wal-Mart Canada has been found guilty of not ensuring a safe workplace following an accident where a warehouse worker tripped over a pallet on the floor of the warehouse and hit his head.
Lorenzo Tagliacozzo was a maintenance employee at a Wal-Mart store in Brampton, Ont. Most of his duties were janitorial, but he also sometimes worked in the warehouse unloading trucks. Hired in February 1999, he filled various positions at the store over the years, including night maintenance, sales floor associate, tire and lube technician, and day maintenance. He began performing janitorial duties in late 2011 and his responsibilities consisted mainly of cleaning washrooms and spills throughout the store.
When Tagliacozzo moved to the maintenance department, he filled out a department-specific safety checklist form and acknowledged a job hazard analysis for day maintenance, which included mention of the risk of a foot injury from pump trucks and pallet jacks in the warehouse. He also read Wal-Mart’s health and safety handbook.
Tagliacozzo received multiple performance appraisals that indicated he complied with the company’s health and safety policies and was reliable in performing his duties. There were no issues or concerns with his following company policies.
On Sept. 20, 2013, Tagliacozzo was working in the warehouse area during the store’s anniversary sale. Things were busy with many items being moved out of the warehouse and there was an empty pallet on the floor. Wal-Mart requires aisles in the warehouse to be maintained with a clearance of at least 42 inches wide, but the empty pallet was sticking out from a row of full pallets in front of the shelving. Tagliacozzo was pulling a skid of bathroom tissue from a trailer with a manual pump truck and moving backwards, facing the skid. He didn’t see the pallet on the floor and he fell over it before a co-worker nearby had a chance to warn him.
Later that day, Tagliacozzo told a co-worker in the lunchroom that he had fallen over an empty skid while pulling another skid. He said he had hurt his head and hand, but seemed fine. The next day, he called Wal-Mart to report the accident and he was asked to come to the store to file a report. Tagliacozzo came to the store and filled out some paperwork, mentioning that he had a headache. He reported that his backside hit the empty skid on the floor and he fell back, hitting his head and left hand on a full pallet beside it.
Wal-Mart had some cameras in the warehouse area, but none of them captured the accident. The only footage showed Tagliacozzo unloading skids from the trailer. However, the co-worker who had tried to warn Tagliacozzo was present and witnessed the accident.
Company, ministry investigated
Wal-Mart launched an investigation and determined the accident was caused by “improper procedure” caused by incorrect use of equipment. Company policy — of which Tagliacozzo had been advised — was to pull pump trucks while facing forward, not backward. An accident investigation report was completed identifying the root causes of the accident to be Tagliacozzo moving backward with the pump truck, not having enough space, and not asking for help to complete the task. Retraining of Tagliacozzo was recommended.
The store manager also checked out the area where the accident occurred, measuring 91 inches from the row of pallets to the row of skids. He determined there was enough room “if he was looking where he was going.”
The Ontario Ministry of Labour learned of the accident and investigated on Oct. 4. The investigator determined that an empty pallet in the aisle would block most of the 42 inches of clearance Wal-Mart specified for its aisles. Because it was near the dock doors, there was some additional space, but the walking aisle was a standard size. Wal-Mart’s dairy manager described the space to the investigator as “tight” for pallets and the pump truck.
Wal-Mart was charged under the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act for failure to ensure that applicable measures and procedures were taken at its workplace to keep the floor of the warehouse free of obstructions.
Two weeks after the accident, on Oct. 5, Tagliacozzo passed away. None of the doctors or medical experts linked his death to the injuries suffered in the Wal-Mart accident.
Wal-Mart claimed that it had taken reasonable precautions and trained Tagliocozzo in its safety policies and it couldn’t have expected him to walk backwards while operating the pump truck and pulling the skid. The company argued that the empty skid on the floor wasn’t a hazard or obstruction, since Tagliocozzo would have been able to manoeuvre around it if he had exercised “ordinary prudence” and used proper forward-facing position.
The Ontario Court of Justice found that Wal-Mart had a designated location for empty skids and pallets in the warehouse area. The empty skid in question was not in that location — it was lying on the floor in an aisle. There was no reason for Tagliocozzo to expect there was a skid in his path and the skid posed a risk of someone tripping. As a result, the skid was a hazard or obstruction, the court said.
The court found that while Tagliocozzo was trained on using pump trucks to pull pallets, that training included walking backwards when negotiating a corner. In addition, the investigator’s analysis of the accident site showed little space for Tagliocozzo to turn after negotiating a corner in the aisle. Though Tagliocozzo may have been careless or exercised poor judgment, he also may have been following his training, said the court.
The court also found there was no evidence as to who left the pallet on the floor, nor did Wal-Mart try to find the reason why it was there.
The court also noted that Tagliocozzo was primarily in a janitorial role since January 2012 and the department safety checklist he signed at that time dealt with other equipment he was supposed to be using, not a pump truck. There was also no evidence he had reviewed the pallet/skid safety guideline that had been updated more than 12 years after his initial training.
The court determined that Wal-Mart had policies and procedures in place to ensure a safe workplace, but there were problems with how it implemented them. It was questionable whether Tagliocozzo was properly trained in using a pallet jack and pump truck, since it wasn’t part of his primary janitorial duties and he had last been trained on them when he started in 1999. As a result, Wal-Mart could not prove due diligence in ensuring that the floor was kept free of obstacles and Tagliocozzo was following procedure. The company was found guilty of the safety violation.
“Whether a prudent person could walk around them or not, there was no reason, even temporarily, to have an empty pallet on the warehouse floor, in an emergency exit aisle, particularly where items are unloaded, and where a person with a loaded pallet jack has to make an angled turn,” the court said.
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