A truckie whose prime mover overturned while transporting steel coils from BlueScope Steel’s Port Kembla plant has been stripped of almost $1million damages he later received.
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Sydney Cartwright was transporting the 21-tonne load to Port Botany on August 29, 2007, when his trailer overturned on a left-hand bend on the Princes Highway at Carss Park, pulling the prime mover over with it.
Mr Cartwright, who worked for Mannway Logistics, a BlueScope Steel contractor, was seriously injured in the crash and was awarded more than $926,000 in damages on July 9, 2013.
At the time of the Common Law Division ruling, Mr Cartwright’s legal team successfully argued that both BlueScope and Mannway had breached their duty of care to the truckie by failing to ensure the steel coils would be stable in the container during transport.
The argument claimed BlueScope began manufacturing coils with an extra timber runner underneath without telling Mannway.
The modification meant the wooden wedges used by Mannway to support the coils, as required by BlueScope’s guidelines, no longer stopped the coils from moving.
But the apparent breach of duty has been thrown out on appeal by BlueScope, as well as any assertion the 41-foot trailer tipped over as a result of the load shifting.
Instead, the NSW Supreme Court of Appeal found that the accident was caused by Mr Cartwright driving at excessive speed.
‘‘It is clear that ... if the vehicle was travelling at 71-73km/h or faster, the trailer would roll on the bend at the accident site before the load would have shifted or toppled, even assuming that the guidelines had been complied with,’’ the court ruled.
The load would not have shifted and toppled when the vehicle was travelling at 55km/h, even if the wedges were not in contact with the pallets on which the relevant coils were mounted, it said.