The Municipality of Eindhoven must pay a female lifeguard from Ir. Ottenbad more than €4,500 in compensation. The woman fell from a supervisory chair after she was startled by a colleague who walked past with a dead mouse in his landing net.
This is evident from the ruling of the subdistrict court judge, which the court published on Monday. The occupational accident happened on 22 June, two years ago.
Dead mouse
The dead mouse was floating in the paddling pool that day, Omroep Brabant writes. A visitor complained to the lifeguard about the mouse in the water. She was supervising another pool at the time.
The lifeguard, who was detached through a secondment agency, called a colleague to get the animal out of the water. She said because she was afraid of mice and was not allowed to leave her place because she had to supervise.
The woman was sitting in a 1.70 metres high supervisory chair at the time. She had her eyes on the outdoor pool when the colleague with the dead mouse passed by.
Above his head
According to the woman, the colleague held the landing net with the dead mouse above her head, but according to the colleague, he walked past at a distance of one and a half metres and did not hold the landing net above her head. Startled, the woman moved forward from the chair, after which she misstepped and fell. The woman suffered an injury to her left knee and was subsequently unable to work for a long time.
Unsafe
As an employer, the Municipality of Eindhoven had a duty of care, it had to ensure that employees did not suffer any damage during work. According to the subdistrict court judge, the municipality has not complied with this.
For example, the supervisory chair, without a backrest and with three narrow steps, was not safe enough. “There is an increased risk of employees getting hurt if they have to leave the chair quickly”. The municipality should also have ensured that pests could be cleaned up in a closed box, so that it was no longer visible to others.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Bob
