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Earls Court Braced For Civil Suit
Although the venue has already been hit with a £175,000 fine because a rigger working on a
By holding the venue wholly responsible for the August 2004 accident, Blackfriars Crown Court cleared the way December 15 for 44-year-old John McLaughlin to bring a civil suit claiming substantial damages.
"It’s fair to say we’ve talked about it and we’ll just have to cross that bridge if we come to it," Earls Court director of communications Jeremy Probert said.
McLaughlin was measuring out the floor plan when he fell 30 feet into an old swimming pool beneath the venue floor. The space had been left open while maintenance work was going on.
He was taken by air ambulance to Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, suffering from broken ribs, a punctured lung, a fractured arm, a dislocated foot and a mild brain hemorrhage.
It was the third major accident at Earls Court since 1999. Seven years ago, two riggers died within six months of each other after falling from the venue’s roof grid.
In the first case, Earls Court & Olympia Group pleaded guilty to breaching the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act after Kevin O’Bryan fell 60 feet to his death.
Like the McLaughlin case, the action was brought by The Royal London Borough Of Kensington and Chelsea, the local authority that licenses the venue.
In the O’Bryan case, Blackfriars Crown Court fined the company £70,000 and ordered it to pay the same in costs, although Earls Court was far from happy about shouldering all the blame for that incident.
It issued a statement saying, "The Judge accepted that Kevin O’Bryan was not authorised to enter the Earls Court roof void nor was he equipped with appropriate personal protective equipment. His employers also failed to supervise him appropriately."
Within six months of O’Bryan’s death, a rigger employed by Unusual Rigging had a fatal fall from the Earls Court roof, after failing to clip his safety harness to the walkway.