Three charged over death of Cody Smith at Lake Mary Pines pineapple farm, Bungundarra
Two people and a company are facing court proceedings in relation to the death of pineapple farm worker Cody Smith at Lake Mary Pines, near Yeppoon, last year. Here’s the latest.
Police & Courts
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Two people and a company are facing court proceedings after a man was killed in an industrial incident at a Capricorn Coast pineapple farm last year.
Cody Smith, 25, died after a harvester struck power lines at Lake Mary Pines on Ingrey Road, Bungundarra, on July 14, 2021.
Those charged under the Electrical Safety Act 2002 are Colin Martin Stevens, Nathan Luke Stevens and Ergon Energy Corporation Limited.
All three have been charged with failing to comply with a Category 2 electrical safety duty - expose an individual to a risk of death, or serious injury, or illness.
Prosecuting the matters is Work Health and Safety prosecutor David Gore.
The three defendants had their matters mentioned in Yeppoon Magistrates Court on October 13, where Acting Magistrate Ron Muirhead granted an adjournment to December 8.
None of the defendants appeared in court.
WHS alleges in court documents that at the time of Mr Smith’s death, Colin Martin Stevens and Nathan Luke Stevens were each trustees for the Stevens Family Trust and they ran the pineapple farm Lake Mary Pines at Bungundarra.
The documents state that Colin Martin Stevens, Nathan Luke Stevens and Cody Smith were part of a nine-person workforce at the pineapple farm.
The operations at the farm included workers harvesting pineapples using a tractor and harvester at a part of the farm traversed by a live overhead powerline, court documents state.
In relation to Colin Martin Stevens and Nathan Luke Stevens, WHS alleges in the documents that the harvesting “posed an electrical risk to the workers”.
WHS further alleges in the documents that while performing the harvesting, the workers were “not electrically safe... because they were not free from electrical risk... because the risk had not been eliminated or minimised, so far as was reasonably practicable.”
In relation to both Colin Martin Stevens and Nathan Luke Stevens, the court documents allege they “could have ensured the electrical safety of the workers while performing the harvesting by ensuring the exclusion of both the workers and the plant from that part of the farm that was beneath, or three metres either side of, the power line until either the height of the power line had been measured and checked against the height of the plant to ensure that there was at least a three-metre difference; or the electrical entity, the works of which the power line formed part, had de-energised the power line”.
The WHS alleges, in relation to both Colin Martin Stevens and Nathan Luke Stevens: “The defendant failed to implement the controls stated... in contravention of his duty”.
It is alleged “the failure exposed the workers to a risk of death or serious injury”.
In relation to Ergon Energy Corporation Limited, WHS alleges in the court documents the company held a distribution authority and its works included an overhead powerline and associated supporting poles which traversed the Lake Mary Pines pineapple farm, and a neighbouring property at Bungundarra.
“The power line posed an electrical risk... to persons at the farm, including Nathan Stevens, Colin Stevens, Cody Smith, Joshua Fritz, Simone Ronchi, Michela Valsecchi, Ian Page, Raymond Sheriff and Ryan Doak (the farm workers),” WHS alleges in the documents.
“The power line was not electrically safe... because the farm workers were not free from electrical risk... because that risk had not been eliminated or minimised, so far as was reasonably practicable,” WHS further alleges.
WHS alleges Ergon Energy could have rendered the power line electrically safe by “ensuring the routine visual inspection of the entire length of the stay wires, including any portion obscured by a guard or otherwise”.
“The defendant failed to implement the control, in contravention of its duty,” WHS alleges in the court documents.
“The failure exposed the farm workers to a risk of death or serious injury,” it further alleges.
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