The owners of a Marsascala quarry have been acquitted of the involuntary homicide of a worker who died when the truck he was in fell into the quarry in the morning of 4 January, 2008.
Żabbar resident Jesmond Vella was unloading fine aggregate - which is used to make concrete - into the Ta' Flusu quarry, which is close to the Sant'Antnin waste treatment plant.
The truck reached the pile of aggregate it was unloading on when this gave way, causing the vehicle to tumble down a height of more than one storey. Mr Vella died inside the cabin.
The quarry is owned by Saliba Bros Ltd, whose directors at the time were Lawrence Saliba, Sammy Saliba and another Lawrence Saliba. Kristian Saliba had also been a director of the company, but he had resigned just four days before the fatal incident took place.
The four were accused of causing Mr Vella's death through negligence, of failing to observe occupational health and safety regulations and of failing to evaluate the risks the quarry presented.
Magistrate Doreen Clarke ruled that Kristian Saliba could not be held responsible since he had left the company before Mr Vella's death took place before proceeding to determine whether his relatives were criminally responsible. Vincent Saliba had replaced him, but he was not charged over the incident.
None of the Salibas had witnessed the accident.
Occupational Health and Safety Authority officials David Saliba and Charles Micallef both testified that the company never carried out a risk assessment, and that a document provided to them by the company, which dated back to November 2004, was only a safety audit. An OHSA inspection had taken place in 2007, relating to a development application filed by the company.
Magistrate Clarke noted that the work Mr Vella was carrying out clearly involved certain safety risks, and that the accused were aware of this.
The Salibas, in fact, noted that they had implemented a particular procedure, which involved trucks unloading material only to a certain point, from where an excavator would transfer it to the bottom of the quarry, a procedure which was not followed by Mr Vella. They noted that no serious incident had taken place at the quarry before Mr Vella's death.
The prosecution, however, argued that Mr Vella's method was the one normally used in the quarry, but there was no evidence of this.
The magistrate said that if the prosecution's claims were true, it was strange that such a dangerous practice was not flagged by OHSA inspectors and included in their report, or that the authority did not take any steps against the company.
Consequently, Magistrate Clarke said that the Salibas could not be found guilty of causing Mr Vella's death through negligence.
She also noted that the occurrence of a fatal occupational accident did not necessarily mean that the company failed to observe occupational safety regulations before ruling that the other charges had not been proven.