Patrick McGuire, 67, had been staying at the Glengarry Castle Hotel in Scotland with his wife and friends when the freak accident happened.
Mr. McGuire was found seated on the upturned bench with his head pushed against the hotel wall and his chin forced into his chest.
A subsequent autopsy ruled the father-of-five had died of “positional asphyxia”.
The court was told that the Victorian cast iron bench that Mr McGuire had been sitting on was one of a pair that had been in use at the hotel for more than 60 years.
Around five years prior to the incident two handymen working at the property decided to cut small wooden blocks to place under the rear legs of the benches to prevent them from sinking into the soft ground.
No regular checks on the stability of the benches were being made at the time and they were not identified as posing any particular health and safety risks in an audit commissioned by hotel management in 2017.
An HSE inspector later concluded that the bench was “structurally sound” and “fit for purpose, provided it was founded on a hard surface”.
source: https://bit.ly/3Zezsg7
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