Last updated 22:01, April 18 2018
DAVID UNWIN/STUFF
A southern tractor and farm machinery company has been ordered to pay a $60,000 emotional harm payment (file photo).
A southern tractor and farm machinery company has been ordered to pay a $60,000 emotional harm payment (file photo).
A farm machinery firm must pay at least $90,000 in compensation after a woman was horrifically injured when she was run over by a tractor because its brakes failed.
The flesh of part of Michele Bastiaansen's leg was torn off as she fell from a trailer attached to the tractor driven by her farmer husband. She also fractured a vertebrae in her neck, her right humerus and a wrist in the incident, Gore District Court was told.
Judge Bernadette Farnanarm ordered Agricentre South Ltd, which has branches in four southern centres, on Wednesday to make a $60,000 emotional harm payment to Bastiaansen and an additional $30,000 for "consequential loss". The judge will impose a fine on the company at a later date.
Following an investigation by WorkSafe New Zealand, the company admitted to failing to ensure the health and safety of the Mataura woman or her farmer husband, Francis Bastiaansen.
An emotional Michele Bastiaansen, reading her victim impact statement in court, said the accident had turned her life upside down. She had since suffered physical and psychological injuries.
She spoke of the horror of her leg injury and said she had lost her dignity, independence and self confidence as a result of the injuries suffered. She had endured eight operations on the leg, she said.
"I struggle daily to remain positive," she said.
A summary of facts says Agricentre South received a 2002 New Holland tractor as a trade-in in 2015 and identified that its brakes were not working. The problem was diagnosed as being with the master cylinders and both the left and right master cylinders were replaced, the summary says.
No further diagnostic work was carried out to determine why the master cylinders or brake system had failed.
The company, which sells, services and provides parts for tractors and farm machinery, delivered the tractor to Mataura farmer Francis Bastiaansen to trial at his farm in 2016.
Francis Bastiaansen said to an Agricentre South staff member at the time the brakes felt "a wee bit soft", but the staff member said he had not noticed.
He called the staffer soon after to say the tractor would not drive. Another staffer identified the problem and also topped up the brake fluid reservoir and bleeding the brake system.
He did not check the brake pedal or whether bleeding the brakes had fixed the issue, and the tractor was delivered back to the Bastiaansen farm house, the summary says.
On April 10, 2016, Francis Bastiaansen and Michele Bastiaansen were using the tractor and a trailer to transport timber to a hayshed.
Francis Bastiaansen was driving the tractor up a 25-degree slope with a trailer attached when he went to apply the brakes, but they failed to work and the tractor and trailer started to roll backwards down the hill.
The trailer jack-knifed and detached from the tractor, hit a bank and rolled, throwing Michele Bastiaansen, who landed on the road.
The tractor drove over her and she suffered a "de-gloving" injury to her left leg, leaving her with an open wound below her right knee and broken bones.
"The defendant exposed Mr and Mrs Bastiaansen to a risk of death or serious injury ... involving the tractor as a result of brake failure," the summary says.