Firm fined £300,000 for grandfather’s fatal fall

By BRIAN HORNE
Published on 19/01/2013 00:38

A BUILDING firm has been ordered to pay out more than £300,000 to the family of a grandfather who died after falling down stairs.

A judge at the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled RJK Building Services had botched the repair job on a banister rail in his home, causing the fatal accident.

Peter McGee and his wife Catherine, had enjoyed an evening in a pub in Springburn where he had been acting as a bingo caller.

They returned home, where their bedroom was on the first floor. Judge Lord Drummond Young was told that Mr McGee went downstairs for a drink of water.

His wife later found him at the bottom of 13 stairs where the handrail had come away from the wall. An ambulance took the 71-year-old man to hospital on 16 July 2009 – where he died two days later from a heart attack.

RJK Building Services of Shettleston, Glasgow, had been ordered to put in the handrails in the McGee home in May 2008.

They accepted that the manner in which the banister had been fixed was negligent but contested the damages.

The court heard it was “almost inevitable” that the handrail would collapse as the wrong type of fixing had been used.