The Criminal Court number 1 of Arrecife has sentenced Antonio Sánchez Rodríguez, Domingo Bonilla Ortega and Juan Manuel Jesús Bethencourt Medina to 8 months in prison for the explosion that took place at the Lanzarote IV plant of Inalsa in 2005. The victim of that workplace accident suffered serious burns on a large part of his body and has not been able to work since then.
More than ten years after this accident, the Court has sentenced the three defendants, who held positions of responsibility in the control of that plant, for a crime against workers' rights and another of injury due to negligence. The ruling also imposes a 6-month disqualification for "the exercise of the condition of head or person in charge of personnel" and the payment of court costs.
The sentence, which has already been notified to the parties and against which an appeal can be filed, considers it proven that Sánchez, Bethencourt and Bonilla had not "bothered" to ensure that the worker "was provided with the necessary work equipment", "which was also not available in the work area in which he was going to intervene".
Inalsa acquired protective equipment after the event
?The victim, who worked as an electrical fitter, had been designated to accompany operators from another company who had come to the plant for the "maintenance and repair of a pump starter". In the compartment where the breakdown had occurred, this employee carried out the task "consisting of disconnecting a circuit breaker in an electrical panel". "When activating the mechanism", the explosion that has left him with significant sequelae was unleashed.
The ruling indicates that the electrician carried out that assignment "without any individual protection equipment that guaranteed his physical integrity, such as fireproof clothing, gloves, protective mask and specific boots", the sentence states. In fact, as the ruling itself states, Inalsa ended up acquiring fireproof uniforms after the tragic event.
Second and third degree burns and up to 5 operations
As the ruling states, the explosion caused this electrician second and third degree burns on 60% of his body, "with loss of large skin extensions", mainly on the abdomen, the right side of the thorax, the arms and the face. He also had "other skin losses", as a consequence of the grafts he needed.
Another of the consequences he suffered was the "loss of muscle mass" due to the injuries from those burns, injuries to the tendons "due to secondary effects of heat and scarring retractions", "nerve injuries in the sensory endings", due to both heat and grafts. To recover, the sentence indicates, he spent 75 days in hospital and required up to 5 operations. The ruling also states that the affected person needed up to 563 days until some injuries stabilized.
And, despite that recovery time and the surgical interventions, the injured party has significant sequelae to this day. The ruling alludes, among others, to a reduction in mobility of between 30 and 40% of "almost all the fingers of both hands" or the "decrease in overall mobility of the right upper limb", in addition to a "considerable aesthetic damage".
"He was aware of the risk assessment"
The sentence also breaks down the responsibilities that these three workers had in the company and points out that all of them "were a few meters from the place where the incident occurred" when the events occurred. Bethencourt was the production director of Inalsa and, as such, the sentence emphasizes, he was the "maximum responsible for the facilities, equipment and personnel" of that plant. Among his functions was to "provide the various groups of workers with protection equipment and equipment in terms of occupational safety".
Regarding this worker, the head of the court also emphasizes that he was "aware of the risk assessment" carried out by an external entity. The ruling states that in that assessment "the need for the personnel in his charge to use the necessary individual protection elements in electrical work was specified", "without (Bethencourt) having been interested on his part in the acquisition for delivery to the workers of fireproof uniforms, a purchase that ended up being concluded after the incident".
"There is no doubt that the use of a fireproof suit would have provided greater protection for the worker, reducing the damage, in view of the severe burns suffered", exclaims the magistrate, who stresses that Bethencourt had a "legal obligation derived from his position" for the "request and provision of the necessary protection equipment".
Bonilla and Sánchez "saw him without protective equipment"
The ruling dwells especially on arguing the responsibility of the other two Inalsa workers. Antonio Sánchez Rodríguez was head of production in July 2005. He reported directly to Bethencourt and was "in effective and daily contact with the workforce" of that plant, the sentence states. It was Bonilla who chose the electrician who was later injured to accompany those operators, while Sánchez was the one who "gave the go-ahead" to that decision, the magistrate explains. For his part, Domingo Bonilla Ortega then held the position of manager of the Punta de los Vientos treatment plant, was "directly subordinate to the previous defendant" and was the "direct hierarchical superior of the rest of the electrical workshop staff" of that work center.
During the trial, these two defendants maintained that "the order" given to the injured electrician "did not include him manipulating anything", "so if the injured party activated the circuit breaker that caused the incident, he did so in contravention of such instructions", the ruling states, which recalls that their defenses also alluded to the training of the affected party to demonstrate their lack of culpability. The judge refutes those two arguments.
"Whether the order given to the worker was that he actively collaborate", or if the order was "simply that he make himself available, there was a risk inherent to those who carry out activities related to electricity", the sentence maintains. The magistrate alludes to various reports and evaluations that were carried out before and after the accident and points out that "it is difficult to maintain, in view of the serious accident that occurred, that there was no risk for the worker". Furthermore, he believes that the qualification of the injured party does not "exempt the defendants from responsibility".
He adds, in addition, a fact that he considers "aggravates his responsibility", and that is that the electrician "was seen by both without using individual protection equipment". "They should have ordered him to use said equipment for his own protection", the ruling maintains, which points out that they did not do so "despite having certain knowledge of the need for them". The sentence also explains that, although the compartment to which the affected party was heading lacked that equipment, there was equipment in the plant; so the injured party could have had them if they had been warned.
For this case, both the Prosecutor's Office and the defense of the injured party, represented by the lawyer Francisco Torres, requested a sentence of 2 years in prison for the three defendants, in addition to disqualification from serving as heads. These requests, however, have finally been reduced because the ruling applies the mitigating circumstance of "undue delays", which it also describes as "highly qualified", having passed more than a decade since the events.
