A metal recycling company has pleaded not guilty to charges following a workplace death in Saint John last summer.
American Iron & Metal (AIM Recycling) is charged in the death of 60-year-old Darrell Richards.
Richards suffered life-threatening injuries while working at the company’s west Saint John facility on June 30, 2022. He died in the hospital the next day, according to police.
AIM Recycling was charged with four offences under the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act.
- Failing to take every reasonable precaution to ensure the health and safety of Richards;
- Failing to acquaint an employee with any hazard related to the handling and disposal of a calender roll;
- Failing to provide the information that is necessary to ensure an employee’s health and safety; and
- Failing to ensure that work is competently supervised and that supervisors have sufficient knowledge.
Legal counsel for AIM Recycling entered not guilty pleas on all four charges during an appearance on Tuesday.
A three-day trial has been scheduled for March 4 to 6, 2024. A pre-trial conference will take place on Oct. 23.
Laragh Dooley, executive director of corporate communications for WorkSafeNB, said a violation of the act carries a maximum penalty of $250,000.
Dooley said the highest penalty to date in New Brunswick for a violation of the act has been $125,000.
Richards’s death was the second workplace fatality at the Saint John facility in less than a year. A man, who has never been identified, died in a separate incident in late November 2021.
Owner Herb Black has said that “to his knowledge” nothing could have been done to prevent either death, adding his operations are “extremely safe.”
“It’s just coincidence or an act of God that things happen,” Black told our newsroom in July.
Black said workers at the facility know they are safe and that these deaths were accidental.
“You could have an accident coming to work. You could get hit by a bus.”
None of the allegations against AIM Recycling have been proven in court.
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