Jury out in tanker case
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• Jacksons Transport of Ossett and its former managing director Alan Jackson were this week awaiting a Bradford jury's decision on manslaughter charges against them. Both had pleaded not guilty.
The charges arose out of the death of James Hodgson, 21, at Jackson's depot in May 1994.
The charges are the first corporate manslaughter charges to be brought against a haulier.
Both Alan Jackson and Jackson Transport also faced charges of a breach of the duty of ensuring their employees' safety in an earlier incident in February. Initially both pleaded not guilty but last week they changed their pleas to guilty.
The company also entered a guilty plea to a charge of breach of duty at the time of Hodgson's death, but Alan Jackson maintained his not guilty plea to the breach of duty charge in nay.
Jackson confirmed that Hodgson had not been sent on a course about hazardous chemicals but he said that this is because the tankers he tame into contact with were "nominally empty".
During his four years as a wash-bay operator, Hodgson received verbal and written warnings about not wearing proper protective equipmert.
Hodgson died within aril hour of being sprayed in th face with the toxic cheinical parachloro-ortho-cresol (PCOC) as he cleaned a tanker.