Building firm fined after ex-Reuters man's lift shaft death

Dominus Construction Group pleaded guilty to failing to post danger signs at a waterfront condominium project site in violation of health and safety law by not posting the word “DANGER” in capital letters at least 150 millimetres in height and in a prominent location around the site.

There was some signage on the external fence indicating danger due to construction, but “this signage was insufficient to warn of the hazard of the open elevator shaft as there was no danger, entry forbidden sign, as required by the regulation on any of the doors leading into the shaft,” a court prosecutor said.

Mollins, 84, fell about 15 feet down the shaft from the ground floor on 17 May 2016. He died in hospital 11 days later.

His younger daughter Julie, who pursued the case with the Ministry of Labour, was in court with other family members on Friday to hear the verdict. She pushed an initially reluctant ministry to bring charges. “If I hadn’t done that, I don’t think anything would have happened,” she said.

Carl Mollins was a Reuters sub-editor in London for five years from 1956. Julie Mollins was a journalist with Reuters and the Thomson Reuters Foundation from 2005 to 2013. ■