A truck driver has been awarded compensation by his former employer after an accident at work resulted in him being crushed by thousands of eggs.
The 600kg load of eggs caused Phil Stacey, 60, serious injuries after he lost his footing whilst loading the eggs onto the back of a lorry.
He said: “I was clinging on as I didn’t want to see umpteen thousand eggs smashed to pieces, but they did. It was a complete mess.”
During the accident, in 2008, Mr Stacey suffered serious injuries to his shoulder, while his employers denied that there had been an accident, let alone one in which an injury had occurred.
He said: “I was pulling the eggs on to the back of the lorry, over the tail lift with a manual pump on a forklift, like I’d done countless times before. The lorry was mucky and needed cleaning out. I had to give them a yank to get them in and I lost my footing.”
After reporting the incident to the transport office, Mr Stacey was forced to stop lorry driving and seek medical help when the pain became too much to bear. He was also eventually made redundant by his employer.
He said: “I’ve been driving a lorry for years and years. However, I’d never had any weight training or lifting training from the company. The accident was not put in the book.”
Mike Clarke, the accident claims solicitor who handled the claim, said: “Mr Stacey was working in the evening on his own and there were no witnesses to his fall, although he rang his transport office immediately to report it.
“Although the defendant’s insurers admitted various breaches of employment regulations, they flatly denied that there had in fact been any accident. Even if there had been a fall, they alleged that it had not caused his injury and that in any event he had been partly to blame for it.
“After detailed investigation, we started court action and shortly afterwards, the insurers were persuaded to negotiate with us. We secured a substantial sum in compensation for Mr Stacey, who is now back at work with another transport company.”