TORONTO, Ont. – Lovat Inc., a Toronto manufacturer of tunneling machines, has been fined in connection with a Sept. 23, 1998 unloading accident that led to the death of a company employee.

Felice D’Ascanio of Mississauga, Ont., was in an area in which workers were trying to remove a 1,100-kg crate from the back of a flatbed trailer. A Ministry of Labor investigation found that the workers had tied one end of a rope around the crate’s skid base and tied the other end to the mast of a lift truck. When the lift truck operator then attempted to pull the crate from the back of the trailer, the rope snapped and the crate’s wooden centre block broke loose and hit D’Ascanio. He died in hospital five days later.

The company was fined $110,000. The supervisor, Richard Thompson of Georgetown, Ont., was fined $5,000. n