A jury has been discharged after it was unable to reach a verdict in the trial of a managing director accused of manslaughter by gross negligence after an employee was crushed to death by a robotic arm.
On Friday, garden landscaping supplies firm Deco-Pak was found guilty of corporate manslaughter and today the jury at Bradford Crown Court continued its deliberations in the case of Michael Hall, 64, of Hullen Edge Lane, Elland, who denies Mr Tibbott’s manslaughter by gross negligence.
This afternoon, the Recorder of Bradford, Judge Richard Mansell QC, discharged the panel after they had deliberated for many hours.
During the long-running trial, the jury heard that maintenance engineer Andrew Tibbott died on Good Friday, 2017, when he was pinned to a conveyor belt after he walked through a gap in the safety fencing on an RM packaging machine.
Deco-Pak and Hall pleaded guilty ahead of the trial to failing to ensure that employees at the factory in Halifax Road, Hipperholme, were not exposed to risk.
The Crown asked for two weeks to decide whether they want a retrial on Hall.
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