Sole Proprietor Fined $15,000 after Worker Dies in Fall

Workers were laying shingles on the second-storey roof of a house when one of them fell almost 24 feet to the ground. He was taken by air ambulance to the hospital and died a month later from complications of blunt head trauma. Neither the constructor nor the primary roofing contractor was at the construction project on the day of the incident. The sole proprietor of a subcontractor carrying out work for the roofing contractor had his workers at the project without permission on a Sunday because he was behind schedule. He pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that workers were protected by a fall protection system. The court fined him $15,000 [Ji Nan Li, Govt. News Release, Oct. 10, 2014].