Preventable death triggers call for action on industrial machine safety

47-year-old Maurice Dooling became entangled in an industrial waste shredder while working at M E Jukes and Son Limited in April 2022. The company was found guilty in December 2025 and has now been sentenced by the Gisborne District Court.

The court found M E Jukes and Son should have installed a perimeter guard with an interlocked gate. This type of guard automatically shuts the machine down when the gate is opened. Installing it would have cost under $20,000. “The non-installation of the relatively low-cost engineering step… constituted a serious and elementary breach,” said Judge Warren Cathcart.

WorkSafe says the case represents a watershed for machine safety.

“Maurice Dooling did nothing wrong, and the court found that the company failed him. The law places the primary duty of care on the business to manage risk. That means putting systems in place that protect people regardless of what is happening around them,” says WorkSafe’s central regional manager, Nigel Formosa.

“When workers are operating dangerous machinery, businesses cannot rely on training and procedures alone to keep them safe. In this case, the court found that automatically stopping the machine when a worker got too close was a straightforward, affordable fix. There was no good reason not to do it.”

Mr Formosa says the incident should prompt every business operating industrial machinery to take a hard look at their own sites.

“If your machinery can still run while workers can reach dangerous parts, that needs to change.”

If you’re unsure where to start, take a few minutes to walk the floor and look at each machine from a worker’s point of view – then fix what you find as soon as possible:

• Check your guarding. If a worker can reach dangerous parts of a machine while it is running, that needs to change now.
• Get advice if you’re unsure. A qualified machinery safety expert can tell you whether your guarding is up to standard.
• Don’t rely on procedures alone. Rules and training matter, but they are not enough on their own. Physical guards that prevent access, or stop the machine automatically, must come first.

WorkSafe’s role is to influence businesses and workers to meet their responsibilities and keep people healthy and safe. When they do not, we take action.

Read our practical guidance on machine lockouts

Background

• M E Jukes and Son Limited was sentenced in a reserved decision of the Gisborne District Court.
• Judge Cathcart imposed a fine of $420,000, alongside reparations of $140,000.
• M E Jukes and Son was charged under sections 36(1)(a) and 48 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.
  • Being a PCBU having a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers who work for the PCBU, including Maurice Victor Wayne Dooling, while the workers are at work in the business or undertaking, namely while working as an observer on the Granutech-Saturn shredder model 44-28HT (waste shredder), did fail to comply with that duty, and that failure exposed the workers to a risk of death or serious injury.

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