Holmes Place Health Clubs Limited and Thyssen Krupp Elevator Ltd. were each fined £233,000 on Friday 14 May at Southwark Crown Court after earlier pleading guilty to a number of health & safety offences in a prosecution brought by the City of London Corporation. Costs of £170,000 and £205,000 respectively were also awarded against them.

They were prosecuted following a fatal accident at the Holmes Places Health Club on the Broadgate complex in March 2003, in which Katarzyna Woja was crushed between the lift car and the lift shaft after becoming trapped in the door way as the lift inexplicably descended as she was still exiting.

An exhaustive investigation by Environmental Health Officers from the City of London Corporation, assisted by the City of London Police and a number of experts from the Health & Safety Executive, the Health & Safety Laboratory and the lift industry failed to identify a definitive cause for the lift’s errant behaviour but uncovered a multitude of poor management practices leading to the breaches of health & safety law for which the two defendants were prosecuted.

In her summing up before sentencing, HHJ Debora Taylor said that there had been a "systematic failure in management" and "no proper system of work for highlighting failures" despite Holmes Place’s "unblemished prior safety record" and that the lift "should have been taken out of service until the fault was identified".

She also found "systemic failures in Thyssen Krupp" in that their documented and quality assurance systems were not followed as they "failed generally" to deal with the lift.

The accident was felt by her to be "highly foreseeable" and was due to the "complacency of both defendants".

Philip Everett, Director of Environmental Services for the City of London said:-

"After a determined and painstaking investigation, we are glad that those whose behaviours led to this tragic accident have been made to answer for their actions or rather, inaction.

"Both companies were guilty of not ensuring that their employees and their agents were fully aware of the consequences of failing in their responsibilities to manage and maintain the lift. In not dealing with the lift’s well-established erratic, and ultimately deadly operation, the situation was allowed to go unchecked for many, many months. Employees and contractors simply went about their work unsupervised.

"Health & safety management is about both making sure the right checks and balances are in place and that they are actually working. Tragically for the deceased and for her family, in this case they clearly were not.

"We always favour working with businesses and through advice and support, helping them improve their performance and legal compliance. However, we are also determined that if serious contraventions of duty placing people at risk are encountered, we will prosecute if in the public interest to do so.

"Finally, on behalf of the City of London Corporation, I would like to express my thanks to all my officers who were involved in the investigation and to our legal team and to all our experts and I would wish to reiterate our deepest sympathy to Ms Woja’s family and friends for their loss."