The labourer had to be flown by air ambulance for emergency treatment at a specialist spinal unit in Taunton in Somerset following the accident at a farm property in St Lawrence two years ago.
He also received treatment for a cut to his head which needed to be glued back together.
Yesterday, the firm, R J Le Sueur Ltd, was fined £25,000 by the Royal Court after admitting breaches of the Island’s health and safety laws.
The accident happened on 7 June 2017 at Douet de Rue Farm when the employee fell more than two metres after a joist he was standing on snapped while he was helping to demolish the first-floor structure of a pool house.
The court heard that before the accident a director of the company, Mr Wilby, had told the employee and a colleague not to remove floorboards and supporting joints from the floor while standing above them.
Mr Wilby had been on site that morning and left satisfied because the pair were carrying out the work from below using step ladders.
But after he left, the pair started working from on top of the floor again because it was an easier way to carry out the work.
Outlining the prosecution’s case, Crown Advocate Conrad Yates said that certain safety measures were not in place at the time of accident.
‘No decking or other protection was provided underneath the joists to prevent a fall through the open joists to the ground below, a distance of approximately 2.4 metres,’ he said.
‘Clearly no trestles or platforms were in place.’
He called for the company to be fined £40,000 for two breaches of the Island’s health and safety regulations.
Advocate Stephen Wauchope, acting for the defendant, said that the Crown had painted a ‘dark’ and ‘uncharitable’ view of the incident.
He added the company directors had been ‘horrified’ by the accident and were ‘very remorseful’.
Delivering the court’s sentence, the Bailiff, Sir William Bailhache, said that the company’s method statement, which described how the job should be carried out, was ‘deficient’ in terms of its risk assessment.
He added that the director should have been present to ensure the work environment was safe and that trestles and platforms should have been in place before the work was carried out.
‘This was a small company and it’s important that small companies recognise, just as large companies do, that health-and-safety regulations are there,’ Sir William said.
He added that he believed that the company had acted ‘negligently rather than cutting corners’, and that a fine of £40,000 would be excessive for the size of the firm’s profits.
The court ordered the company to pay a fine of £25,000. Jurats Charles Blampied and Pamela Pitman heard the case.
