DORCAS DZAM V. VOLTA FOREST PRODUCTS LTD

JUDGMENT

1 Plaintiff’s case 

On 31 July 2018 by a writ of summons, the plaintiff commenced this action before against the defendant simply for “general damages for negligence”. Plaintiff’s case is that on 17 August 2015 at about 2:30 in the afternoon, whilst on duty removing waste materials from the Kupper Guillotine Machine (KGM) at the defendant production department, she was involved in an industrial accident when the KGM suddenly came down when no one had pressed its power button and chopped off her right four fingers. She was rushed to the Hohoe Municipal Hospital and transferred to the Volta Regional Hospital the next day where she was admitted for 17 days. 

The plaintiff described how the KGM operates: that is, it splits the veneer by its vertically installed sharpening blade, and that after splitting an edge of the plywood, the machine returns to its normal OFF position and that its ON power button has to be pressed once again before it comes down to split the other edge of the p…