Wellington gym members put at risk of injury

11 October 2006

The conviction of a Wellington gym for putting members at risk of injury is a reminder that businesses have an obligation to protect clients and customers from harm, the Department of Labour says.

Sports-Wide Ltd has been convicted and fined for putting its gym goers at risk, after not adequately examining or fixing a weights machine that had failed and crushed a member.

Sports-Wide Ltd, which operates two Wellington gyms, was today fined $2000 following a breach of the Health and Safety in Employment Act at its ‘Atrium’ gym on The Terrace.

In December 2005, a gym member became trapped beneath around 300 kilograms of weights after a leg press machine he was using failed. The weights cradle had detached from its rails and fell on to him, fracturing his vertebrae in the process. It took six men to lift the weights carriage to free him, and he was taken to hospital by ambulance.

The leg press was reassembled after the accident, but no fault was identified. Sports-Wide Ltd re-commissioned the machine unchanged a week after the incident, and put up a notice instructing users not to load more than 240kg on to the weight stack. The gym mistakenly believed operator misuse had caused the accident and that restricting the amount of weight used was a sufficient response.

Acting health and safety manager for Wellington-Kapiti Alan Cooper said Sports-Wide Ltd had made no attempt to contact the accident victim to either check on his wellbeing or seek his account of the event.

Sports-Wide Ltd also failed to report the serious harm incident to the Department of Labour. The man who was crushed alerted the Department in January 2006.
Mr Cooper said two inspectors visited the gym following the complaint and noticed straight away that the machine still posed a risk to users.

The weights cradle had not been altered since the event, and there was still a risk it could detach and crush other users, Mr Cooper said. A notice prohibiting its use was issued until the equipment was satisfactorily modified a day later.

“It’s reasonable to assume the gym wasn’t initially aware there was anything deficient with the leg press, but after this serious accident they should have considered more carefully whether the same thing could happen again, and how to prevent it,” Mr Cooper said.

“The machine was able to be modified easily and safely, to prevent the cradle coming free. But the gym management was so fixated on believing the accident was caused by the operator, that it didn’t do all it could have done to prevent it happening again and that put other users at risk of serious injury.”

Mr Cooper said clients and customers had every right to expect to be safe while they visited business premises, or operated equipment they had paid to use.

“This conviction should serve as a reminder to businesses of their obligations not only to staff, but to members of the public who have a right to be on their premises.”

Sports-Wide Ltd pleaded guilty in the Wellington District Court last week of a charge of failing to take all practicable steps to protect clients from workplace hazards.

To the journalist: please note that health and safety services formerly referred to as Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) should now be referred to as the Department of Labour.