AIM pleads not guilty to 4 counts related to worker's death

American Iron and Metal pleaded not guilty Tuesday to four workplace safety charges after a 60-year-old worker died on the job.

Lawyer Jennifer Adam entered the plea in Saint John provincial court on behalf of the metal recycling company.

In June 2022, Darrell Richards was injured while working at the company's scrapyard on the west side of Saint John. He later died in hospital. 

The Crown is prosecuting AIM for allegedly failing to properly protect, train or inform Richards, and failing to make sure work was overseen by trained supervisors.

Judge Claude Haché set the trial dates for March 4, 5, and 6 of 2024. A pre-trial conference is scheduled for Oct. 23.

On each charge, a finding of guilt carries a maximum fine of $250,000, a maximum of six months in jail or both.

Not the only death at the scrapyard

Richards was injured while cutting into a calender roll with a saw in order to prepare it for recycling. A calender roll is a large cylinder, typically made of steel and sometimes covered in fibre, used to press paper and plastic. 

When Richards cut into it, it decompressed, lacerating his leg and causing bleeding, his daughter-in-law said at an AIM-organized news conference last year

Richards was the second worker to die on the job at AIM in a seven-month period, causing an outcry from local politicians and residents. The first worker, who was never publicly identified, died after getting swept out of a truck bed by a crane wielding a large ball of metal fencing used to clean out small debris.

WorkSafeNB recommended charges against AIM in the death of the unidentified man, but the Crown rejected those charges because there was no reasonable chance of conviction.

AIM signed a 40-year-lease for its scrapyard with the Port of Saint John in 2002 and has since been the site of fires and dozens of loud explosions. Mayors, a member of Parliament, and community members have called for AIM's licence to be suspended.