The lid should have held itself open. That is what the gas strut is for. You lift it, it stays, and you load your samples with both hands free.
This strut had stopped working. So the worker held the lid up by hand while they loaded the centrifuge, and at some point it slipped out of their grip and came down.
What Happened
The worker was in the virology lab at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, at 50 Charlton Avenue East, loading samples into a Megafuge centrifuge. The lid on that centrifuge relied on a gas strut to stay open. The strut had failed and needed replacement, which left the worker holding the lid open manually every time they loaded it.
While the worker was loading samples, the lid slipped and fell, causing a critical injury.
Here is the part that turns this from an accident into a conviction. The gas strut had been flagged for replacement in a maintenance report in June 2023. It was flagged again in a maintenance report in June 2024. Two separate reports, a year apart, both said the same thing: this part needs to be replaced. The repair was delayed because the wrong part came in. It was finally completed two days after the worker was hurt.
The Ministry of Labour investigation confirmed the equipment was not maintained in good condition, and that the fault had been documented long before the injury.
St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton was convicted under Section 25(1)(b) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act and fined $65,000 plus a 25% victim fine surcharge. The conviction was registered June 18, 2026.
What the Law Says
Section 25(1)(b) of the OHSA requires an employer to ensure that the equipment, materials, and protective devices they provide are maintained in good condition.
Basically, what this means is simple: if you give a worker a piece of equipment to use, it has to be kept working. A centrifuge with a dead lid strut is not in good condition. It is a heavy lid held up by a person's hand, and everyone in the loop knew it.
What made this case costly was the paper trail. This was not a hidden defect. It was written down in June 2023, written down again in June 2024, and still not fixed when the lid fell. An incorrect part explains a delay. It does not excuse running the equipment in a known-defective state while people kept using it. When a report flags a safety-critical part, the equipment should be fixed or taken out of service until it is. The $65,000 fine reflects the gap between knowing and acting.
Three Things This Case Teaches Ontario Employers
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A maintenance report is a promise, not a filing. When an inspection flags a part for replacement, that finding starts a clock. Logging it and moving on is not compliance. Track every open safety-critical repair to closure, and escalate the ones that sit unresolved across reporting cycles. A fault flagged twice, a year apart, is a system that logs problems but does not close them.
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A wrong part is a trigger to remove equipment from service, not to keep using it. The repair here stalled because the wrong strut arrived. That happens. What should not happen is the equipment staying in daily use in its broken state while the correct part is chased down. If a safety-critical component has failed, tag the equipment out until it is fixed. Manual workarounds like holding a heavy lid by hand are the injury pathway.
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The workaround is the warning. The moment a worker has to hold, prop, or force a piece of equipment to do what it should do on its own, the control has already failed. Train supervisors and staff to report workarounds as hazards, not normalize them. If someone is holding the lid, the lid is broken, and the equipment should be down.
Pull your maintenance logs for the equipment your people use daily. Find every item flagged for repair more than one cycle ago and still open, then go look at whether that equipment is still in service. What is being held open by hand right now, and how long the fix has been sitting on a report, will tell you where the next injury is already scheduled.