Grand Excelsior Hotel General Manager Noel Grixti has been fined €6,000 after an employee lost four fingers when her hand got caught in an industrial laundry iron machine containing steam rollers.

The Excelsior compensated Victoria Cassar for her injuries but had declined to admit to criminal liability for the incident which took place. 

Mr Grixti, in his capacity as a general manager, is accused of negligently allowing an employee to become injured while on the job, failing to ensure the safety and security of hotel employees, failing to carry out systematic evaluations on the safety risks associated with work being carried out by employees, failing to ensure the safety and security and workers at all times, failing to ensure that the equipment used by workers is adapted for the intended purposes and failing to carry out maintenance work on workplace equipment. 

Courts tried to ascertain whether the accused, Mr Grixti, can be held personally responsible for the permanent disability suffered by Ms Cassar. Representatives from the Malta Tourism Authority, Jobsplus (formerly known as the Education and Training Corporation) and the Excelsior Executive House Keeper of the time all testified that he was either the General Manager, registered as the Director of Human Resources or that he was the registered under various licences for the hotel.

The incident took place in 2009 when Ms Cassar’s hand got caught in a ‘Large Laundry Ironer’ in the hotel laundry room. The court heard how Ms Cassar spotted a piece of plastic in the ‘roller’ of the laundry ironer machine. Upon trying to remove this piece of plastic, Ms Cassar’s hand got stuck in the roller. In the panic, she was unable to hit the emergency stop button, however a fellow employee managed to hit the button. Throughout the confusion, the button got hit yet again, switching the machine back on, following which Ms Cassar managed to pry her hand free. 

A report commissioned by the Operational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) to engineer Cecil Chircop found that the “roller velocity is relatively slow thus making feeding of wet linen easy and quite safe. In fact, even if one inadvertently has his fingers caught on this rubber roller it is possible to just pull back one’s hand without injury”.

Inspector James Grech, speaking with Ms Cassar in hospital after the incident, told the courts how the she explained to him about never receiving any form of basic training on how the machine operates. The accused refuted this by saying that she received “some form of training” and presented an Induction Health and Safety Certificate dated 16 October 2008. While Ms Cassar conceded that she had a one-day health and safety seminar, she maintained that this did not include training on how to operate the machine.

In his testimony, the accused maintained that the machine had already been installed when he began his post with the hotel. He explained that Ms Cassar hurt her hand because it got stuck in the “small roller” which employed a safety mechanism for when the machine got jammed. Had her hand got stuck on the ‘big roller’, the safety mechanism of the small roller would have come into effect, freeing up her hand instantly, he said.

He added that he could not understand how she managed to get her hand stuck, because Ms Cassar is “quite short” and the machine is apparently quite far off the ground.

“With the training that Victoria Cassar had, she knew that she should not have put her hand in the machine. If she pressed the emergency stop button before placing her hand, this incident would not have taken place,” he told the court.

On her part, Ms Cassar said that stopping the steam roller before placing her hand in the machine did not come to her at the time, and it was only after her hand got stuck did she remember the emergency stop button. 

Ms Micallef, the executive house keeper, testified that all employees receive some form of training, “obviously on the machinery”.

“The first thing she (Ms Cassar) was taught was about safety measures,” Ms Micallef said, adding that supervisors are present the majority of the time. She said however that the supervisor on duty was not in the room at the time of the incident. She said that Ms Cassar should have hit the emergency stop button first before sticking her hand close to the rollers. 

Employees testified that training on the machinery in question was limited to how to switch it on and off, where to place the bed sheets and where the emergency button was located. One witness declared that workers deserved more detailed training in light of the heavy machinery being used.

In her conclusions, Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech held that while Ms Cassar can be found to be “contributory negligent”  due to her decision to place her hand in the roller while it was still on, this does not exonerate from criminal liability over a number of shortcoming on behalf of the company. Such shortcomings, while being of a criminal nature, does not reach a level that would merit the accused being deprived of his liberty, she added.

The courts took into consideration that the accused could have been a “pioneer”, in the words of the prosecution, in health and safety at the workplace thanks to efforts he has made within the sector. While this being the case, the court found that Mr Grixti failed to implement a number of measures in order to fully ensure the health and safety of his workers.

The accused was therefore found guilty of all charges brought against him and fined a total of €6,000.