Steve Sullivan has thirty years’ experience marine engineering in Nelson. As managing director and substantial shareholder of Aimex Ltd he is now serving a twenty month prison term for perverting the course of justice after misleading WorkSafe staff investigating an industrial accident on site.
In July 2019, an Aimex employee passed out, overcome by fumes while working alone in a confined space inside a boat’s hull. He suffered brain damage. Five days earlier, a different employee on the same job had become light-headed in similar circumstances but climbed out of the hull aware he was at risk. He completed a Health & Safety incident report and was told to go home and rest.
Aimex Ltd was prosecuted for a breach of Health and Safety at Work Act. WorkSafe was told that other than its report on the employee found unconscious, Aimex held no reports of similar incidents in the past. The incident report about the event five days previously was destroyed by an Aimex employee. This supposedly clean record resulted in a reduced fine for Aimex.
After Aimex’ sentencing, a newly appointed chief operating officer came to learn of the existence of the prior report and its suppression. He confronted Sullivan as managing director, learning ‘as far as [Sullivan] was concerned, once the incident report was destroyed, it never existed.’ The new chief operating officer consulted his lawyers then made a protected disclosure statement to WorkSafe as a whistleblower and resigned from Aimex.
Sullivan appealed his twenty months imprisonment for perverting the course of justice as being manifestly excessive. Justice Grice said the offence strikes at the heart of the administration of justice, requiring a deterrent sentence. The appeal was dismissed.
Sullivan v. R. – High Court (4.09.23)
23.147