Health and safety boss sues employer ... for health and safety issues

A health and safety chief who fell from a warehouse balcony is suing his employer for alleged health and safety failings.

Glyn Caddick, 54, chief operating officer and head of health and safety for Beauty Bay, a makeup and e-commerce brand, fell over safety rails, and suffered multiple injuries, in February 2022.

Mr Caddick claims that the railing guarding the balcony was not high enough and that he was not warned “not to climb” on shelves placed on the third-storey warehouse mezzanine.

However, his bosses deny fault for the accident, and have said that Mr Caddick himself was responsible for health and safety matters in the Salford warehouse.

They blame him for “precariously” leaning over the safety rail to take a picture.

Mr Carrick, who spent nine months in hospital after the fall, is now suing the company and warehouse owners Gxo Logistics Uk Limited for “seven figures”.

Ben Bradley KC, for Mr Caddick, told London’s High Court in written submissions that Mr Caddick had been inspecting the warehouse when the accident happened.

The barrister said Mr Caddick had no “direct recollection” of the incident, but CCTV captured him going to the mezzanine floor of the warehouse, and “checking an area of racking/shelving close to a guard rail”.

Mr Bradley added: “It is likely that ... he stood on the bottom shelf of the racking so as to enable him to check that the top shelves had been cleared of stock and/or items; he then lost balance and fell over the guard rail.”

He claimed that the rail, which was 1.2m high, with mesh extended above the rail extending it to 1.6m, was “insufficiently high” to stop Mr Caddick’s fall, as he was “no longer standing at floor level”.

Mr Caddick’s case alleges negligence or a breach of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 because there was not “reasonable consideration” that a person may climb up the shelving.

He said Mr Caddick’s bosses had “failed to communicate to him that he should not stand or climb on the racking shelves under any circumstances”.

At a pre-trial hearing, Mr Bradley told Master Stephen Byass, the High Court judge, that an earlier health and safety report had “foreseen the risk of individuals standing on the shelf”.

He added: “It’s frankly amazing that the claimant survived at all. He suffered life-changing injuries and consequently this is plainly a claim of seven-figure value on a full liability basis ... a very high value claim where much turns on the evidence.”

Noel Dilworth, representing Beauty Bay at the hearing, told the judge: “The guardrail was properly positioned and would have prevented a fall had the claimant not placed himself in such a precarious position.”

In its written defence to the claim, James Rowley KC, the company’s lawyer, said Mr Caddick himself was the “only controlling influence” in the accident, as the director with “overall responsibility for health and safety”.

Mr Rowley added that an image found on Mr Caddick’s phone after he fell seemed to have been taken just before the incident, suggesting he “leant out with the camera above and well beyond the line of the mesh in order to photograph the scene below”.

He said: “The claimant raised his centre of gravity above the level of the upper guard rail, which was properly positioned at 1.2m and in perfect condition, and leant out significantly, thereby defeating the obvious purpose of the guard rail.”

Angus Withington KC, in the defence of warehouse owners Gxo Logistics Uk Limited, claimed that Mr Caddick had climbed high up on the shelving and put a foot on the top of the guardrail before falling.

He suggested it was “more likely that the claimant was standing on the top guardrail before he fell from the level of the third mezzanine floor or from a position at or above the height of the top guardrail”.

After a short hearing, the judge gave permission for an engineering expert to be recruited for trial to investigate the set up of the railing and shelves to draw conclusions about how the fall occurred.

The case will return to court for a full trial at a later date.