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| Gym fined for banker's lift death | Gym fined for banker's lift death |
| (10 minutes later) | |
| A health club has been fined £233,000 after a banker was crushed to death by a lift. | |
| Polish-born Katarzyna Woja, 32, was killed as she stepped out of a lift at Broadgate Health Club in the City of London on 12 March 2003. | Polish-born Katarzyna Woja, 32, was killed as she stepped out of a lift at Broadgate Health Club in the City of London on 12 March 2003. |
| She was dragged between a wall and the lift when it suddenly fell a few feet and stopped between two floor levels. | She was dragged between a wall and the lift when it suddenly fell a few feet and stopped between two floor levels. |
| At Southwark Crown Court, Holmes Place and ThyssenKrupp Elevator UK were fined £233,000 each over safety breaches. | At Southwark Crown Court, Holmes Place and ThyssenKrupp Elevator UK were fined £233,000 each over safety breaches. |
| Both companies had previously admitted breaking health and safety laws. | |
| The lift had dropped the day before the accident and had allegedly been repaired, the court in London was told. | |
| 'Glaringly obvious' | |
| Tim Owen QC, prosecuting, said: "This was an accident that didn't come out of the blue, without warning." | |
| The reason for the drop has never been established, but it is believed it was either a hydraulic problem or the lift's mechanisms froze or crashed, he said. | |
| Neither Holmes Place nor ThyssenKrupp responded properly to "clear warning signs" which made it "glaringly obvious" that something was seriously wrong with the lift for months, Mr Owen added. | |
| Between 7 January 2002 and 11 March 2003, there were 41 separate call-outs to the lift which killed Ms Woja, compared with an average of three per year for a well-maintained lift, Mr Owen told the court. | |
| Judge Deborah Taylor said there was a "culture of complacency" and "systemic failures" on the parts of both defendants. | |
| The danger posed to the public by the faulty lift was "highly foreseeable", she said. |