A food manufacturing company has been ordered to pay out £94,523 in fines and court costs after a worker suffered a severe injury to his hand.

Ludmila Jurkevica, 27, from King’s Lynn, was attempting to clear a blockage in a packaging machine when three of his fingers got crushed.

Tulip Packaging of Warwick was fined £65,000 and ordered to pay costs of £29,523 over the injury, which occurred in November 2007.

Speaking after the verdict at Norwich Crown Court, Health and Safety Executive inspector Steven Gill said: "This was a nasty incident which could have been avoided had the company checked how safe the machinery was and taken precautions to protect staff.

"Machines like these can be incredibly dangerous and cause serious injury."

In a similar incident heard in court last month, Orica UK of Wigan was fined £10,000 after an employee lost two fingers when trying to remove a blockage from a machine.

A welder from Liverpool has won £140,000 in compensation after he contracted terminal cancer from working with asbestos.

Ronnie Cadwallader, 76, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in November 2007 after spending part of his working life stripping asbestos lagging off pipes, turbines and boilers.

His wife Ann told the Livepool Daily Post: "Ronnie was so fit and healthy, always running and never smoked or drank. All of a sudden he was really poorly with no energy.

"It was horrific."

His two-year struggle for compensation was made more complex by the fact that the two firms he had carried out such work for were no longer in business.

But Mr Cadwallader has finally been offered compensation by insurance firm Zurich, which was the insurer for one of his former employers, Carolina Engineering.

The Health and Safety Executive has recently launched a campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of working with asbestos aimed at tradesman and maintenance workers.

A hospital trust is facing a compensation claim after it was fined £10,000 when a vulnerable patient in its care fell out of a first-floor window and suffered serious injuries.

North East Essex Primary Care Trust admitted breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act after Charles Preston, a partially-sighted 68-year-old, suffered breaks to his shoulder, pelvis and coccyx when he fell.

The incident occurred at the Clacton & District Hospital in March 2008.

Following the court ruling, Mr Preston has announced his intention to sue the trust.

Kim Wicks, the Health and Safety Executive inspector who investigated the case, said the accident could have been avoided.

"The control measures, in this case window restrictors, to prevent this risk are easy to fit and maintain," she said.

Last week, the Herald reported that student Jonathan Harvey was going to sue Plymouth City Council after he fell 20ft through a broken fence on council property.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has warned employers that they must adhere to regulations regarding working at height following an accident in which a man broke his spine.

Philpott Demolition and Recycling employee Gediminas Vasiliauskas had been removing roof tiles from an aircraft hangar when the tragedy occurred in April 2007.

He was not wearing a safety harness and when he lost his footing, he fell from the roof of the building. The victim had to have a metal plate inserted into his spine and lost his sense of taste and smell.

He was also unable to work for a year after the accident.

Tim Philpott, the owner of the business, was fined for breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and was given a substantial fine.

HSE Inspector Nicola Surrey said: "Mr Vasiliauskas was lucky to survive this incident, which could have been avoided if his employer had taken precautions to ensure his employee’s safety."

Under Work at Height Regulations, every employer should make sure that work is not carried out at height when it can be successfully carried out at ground level.

Where work at height is carried out, employers are legally obliged to take adequate steps to prevent falls.

A firm in Scotland has been prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after one of its employees was seriously injured by a piece of machinery.

The unnamed man had been filling a Mobile Explosives Manufacturing Unit at Orica UK in Muirside when the accident occurred in February 2008.

He had been pouring emulsion into the machine when it suddenly blocked. As he reached in to clear the blockage, it unexpectedly started again and the man lost two of the fingers on his right hand.

An investigation by HSE officers found that the plant’s equipment was not properly guarded and there was no safe way to clear blockages that did occur. Orica UK was fined £10,000 for breaching health and safety regulations.

HSE Inspector Colin Hutchinson commented: "This was a serious and avoidable incident. All companies conducting similar operations must learn from this incident by making sure their safety procedures are both sufficient and rigidly followed."

According to statistics published by the HSE, 299,000 reportable injuries occurred at work between 2007 and 2008, resulting in the loss of six million working days.

A man who suffered a back injury at work has been awarded £22,000 from his former employer.

John Atkin was a delivery driver for Johnston Press in February 2007 and had been delivering newspapers in Northumberland.

However, when he came to unload at a drop-off point, he found that the newspapers had been put in the van incorrectly and had shifted.

As he went to rearrange them in the confined space, he badly injured his back.

Due to the injury affecting his right arm and shoulder, Mr Atkin has been unable to work since.

He took legal action against Johnston Press, which admitted breaching health and safety regulations and has agreed to pay £22,000 in compensation.

According to the Health and Safety Executive, 80 per cent of people will suffer from back pain at some point in their lives. Much of this is caused or worsened by duties at work and employers should have measures in place to avoid such injuries.

A pet food manufacturing company has been fined £10,000 after one of its employees was crushed to death in a piece of machinery.

John O’Connor, 38, had been working at the Butcher’s Pet Care factory in Northamptonshire and entered a palletising machine to clear a blockage.

However, when he moved the can of pet food that had become jammed, the fully-automated machine restarted.

Mr O’Conor was pulled into its workings and was crushed to death.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that staff should not have been able to access the moving parts of machines, which should all have had guards in place.

Butcher’s operations director Philip Thompson was fined for breaching work equipment regulations and was ordered to pay a fine and compensation.

HSE inspector Neil Craig said: "This was far from being an isolated incident. The unfenced gap between the stair rails had been there for nearly two years."

According to HSE statistics, there were 35 fatal injuries to workers in manufacturing between 2007 and 2008.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has warned schools that they must put appropriate safety measures in place following an incident in which a 16-year-old girl suffered burns so serious that she had to have most of her fingers amputated.

During an A Level art class at the Giles School in Lincolnshire, the unnamed girl decided to make a plaster cast of her hands and filled a vat with plaster of Paris.

However, she was unaware that the substance gives off intense heat when mixed with water – an exothermic reaction – and she plunged her hands into it. The plaster set rapidly and the pupil was unable to get her hands out. Staff and fellow students tried, but an ambulance had to be called while the girl’s hands were burning inside the plaster.

After she got to hospital, it was found that her injuries were so severe that she had to have both of her thumbs and all but two of her fingers amputated.

The school’s governing body was fined for breaching health and safety regulations, and HSE inspector Jo Anderson said the incident should serve as a warning after it was found that pupils were not instructed about the dangers plaster of Paris could pose.

"We want the public to understand that risk assessments in educational establishments must not be viewed as burdensome, but instead, paramount to pupil safety," she remarked.

Sugar company Tate and Lyle has been fined for breaching health and safety regulations after an incident in which an employee was killed.

Keith Webb, 53, was sub-contracted to work at the firm’s sugar refinery in Newham in March 2004 and had been unloading raw sugar from a ship using a bulldozer.

However, part of the crane holding the machine in place suddenly snapped, causing the bulldozer to plunge onto the ship and then into the sea.

Mr Webb was killed instantly and Tate and Lyle was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Its investigation found that the company had failed to properly manage staff and to provide safe access to the ships.

Tate and Lyle has now been fined £270,000 plus £90,000 costs for breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

HSE inspector John Crookes said: "In failing to identify and address these inadequacies before they led to the death of a worker, Tate and Lyle’s performance fell well below what could be reasonably expected of them."

Employers must act to remove where possible hazards that could cause accidents or death. If this is not carried out to a satisfactory standard, victims or their families may be eligible to claim compensation.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has fined and prosecuted a company that admitted exposing its workers to hazardous fumes from soldering equipment.

Employees at Turbo Power Systems’ plant in Gateshead had been working for up to five-and-a-half hours a day with rosin solder flux, the fumes of which are known to cause asthma.

The exposure occurred between May 2007 and May 2008 and many employees began to suffer problems with their respiratory health.

As a result, the HSE took the company to court for breaches of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. It was fined £3,000 and ordered to pay costs after admitting to safety failures.

HSE inspector Andrea Robbins said it had been "entirely foreseeable" that inappropriate risk assessment and control of chemicals would put the workforce at risk.

Rosin is a natural product which comes from pine sap. Fumes from rosin solder flux are a well-known cause of occupational asthma.