Worker Crushed By Slabs of Marble
A young man who we’ll call “Peter”, worked for a company in Queens, NY that imports large quantities of marble for use in construction projects. Peter’s employer took delivery of the marble in the form of large, flat slabs, stacked high inside of a shipping container. The shipping container was mounted on a tractor-trailer. The employer directed Peter and his co-workers to unload the marble slabs from the containers. The job was difficult, as a marble slab typically weighed more than 500 pounds.
Left to their own devices, Peter and his co-workers figured out a way to unload the marble slabs, one by one. One co-worker would operate a forklift while Peter, standing inside the container, would maneuver and hitch the forklift to the top-most slab on the pile. With the marble slab loaded on the forklift and elevated, Peter would signal to the operator of the tractor-trailer to drive forward, thereby separating the slab on the forklift from the rest of the pile.
During one fateful workday, a shipment of approximately 35 marble slabs arrived in Queens. Peter entered the shipping container, and instructed the forklift operator to elevate the topmost marble slab. Inexplicably, the operator of the tractor-trailer caused the truck to move forward, and as a result the pile of remaining marble slabs, which together must have weighed several tons, shifted, slid, and pinned Peter to the side of the container, crushing him.
That is horrible for sure. I heard several forklift accidents recently and that is really disappointing.