Court orders worker to pay company $33,000 in costs
A construction worker in Singapore who sued his employer has lost his case in court after failing to prove that he fell from his trailer bed in 2020.
Kalimuthu Muruganantham is a construction worker hired by Shincon Industrial Pte. Ltd, who was involved in an industrial accident in July 2020 when he fell from a height of about two metres from a trailer bed.
He landed on his right foot and right elbow and was subsequently unable to get up and walk right after the incident, according to one of the medical reports submitted in court.
Muruganantham claimed that he fell from the trailer bed after being struck in the chest by a bundle of metal beams which was being lifted by an excavator off the trailer bed at the time.
He alleged that the incident was caused by the negligence of his employer, and that they were liable for failing to implement a safe system of work.
Was it a workplace accident?
Shincon Industrial, however, argued that Muruganantham "made up the story" of how he got injured.
The employer accepted that the construction worker sustained injuries from the incident but disputed that he fell from the trailer bed.
According to Shincon, who brought in Muruganantham's co-workers as witnesses, his drop was because he chose to "voluntarily jump off the trailer bed,” instead of being struck by the metal beams.
Court sides with employer over ‘accident’
The district court sided with the employer in the case, accepting the claims of Muruganantham's co-workers that he jumped off the trailer bed.
The court noted that there was "no objective independent evidence that the [worker] was ever struck in the torso, by any object" during the incident.
"None of the three medical reports disclosed by the [worker] in these proceedings documented any injury to the area in which he claimed he had been struck by the bundle," the court decision read.
"Equally importantly, none of the three medical reports even recorded that the [worker] had reported that he had been struck in the torso that day, despite otherwise recording the [worker’s] account of the accident he had suffered."
Even Muruganantham's co-workers did not have evidence that he was struck by a metal bundle that caused him to fall off the trailer bed, the court noted.
As a result, the court dismissed his case and ordered him to pay costs fixed at $33,000 to Shincon Industrial.
