A recent Supreme Court ruling sets a new standard for determining the victim’s contributory guilt in construction accidents.
■ background: The plaintiff is a Palestinian citizen who was employed as a cleaning worker at a construction site in Beit Shemesh. As part of his job he fell from a four-story height to an unfenced elevator shaft, was seriously injured and was left paralyzed in his lower body. According to the Supreme Court ruling, the district court ruled that the company was negligent in that the shaft was not fenced and it did not actually provide protective equipment, but ruled that the operator had a contributory fault to the accident, at a rate of 15% of the damage caused to it. Hapoel appealed to the Supreme Court against this determination (and on another issue).
■ The decision: The Supreme Court reversed the district court’s ruling in this matter, holding that “this is not an employee who proactively and knowingly took an uncalculated risk during work, but who acted within the boundaries outlined by the employer, and erred in a moment of inattention. This error does not arise in the circumstances It is a matter of negligence. “
Vice President Justice Handel even refers to an earlier judgment he himself wrote, in which he actually ruled guilty contributor, but notes that in the previous case there was a lack of factual clarity, and that there was a skilled worker, and in the present case a cleaning worker, and in a situation where even warned about the lack of fencing. the lift.
“In a broader view,” Judge Handel wrote, “the case before us is another example of the alarming and continuing phenomenon of work accidents in the construction industry … Like the appellant, there are too many who went to work on the construction site in the morning and returned with severe disability. They did not even return home at all. “
The judge added: “Of course, the employee must also be deterred from unsafe behavior, and there are many cases in which a contributory fault should be imposed on him. However, in this context, his relatively inferior status and the circumstances in which he operates must be borne in mind.”
■ Implications: Adv. Amit Uriah, who represented Hapoel together with Adv. Uri Gilboa, believes that the ruling is of great importance: To rule that 15% is guilty of contributing is to reduce more than 50% of the compensation for the injured party – this is NIS 740,000.
“Beyond that, we wanted there to be a normative statement here. Accidents at construction sites are a blow to the state. A junior cleaner who sleeps in a building and cleans the floor and falls into an unfenced elevator shaft, is he to blame? . There was not even an investigation in this case – neither of the police nor of the Ministry of Labor. They brought him in an ambulance to cross the territories.
“He did not jump down. He did not do anything unreasonable. Justice and law have met here, and when it happens in the Supreme Court it is especially good.