A manager with Best Green Hedges Inc. pleaded not guilty of criminal negligence causing death at a judge-alone trial on Monday, more than two years after a 20-year-old employee died on the job. Read MoreNicholas Chenier was trimming a hedge at a residential property in Manotick before he was electrocuted on May 5, 2023
Nicholas Chenier was trimming a hedge at a residential property in Manotick before he was electrocuted on May 5, 2023
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A manager with Best Green Hedges Inc. pleaded not guilty of criminal negligence causing death at a judge-alone trial on Monday, more than two years after a 20-year-old employee died on the job.
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Nicholas Chenier was working at a residential property in on Jean Park Road in Manotick for the hedge-trimming company on May 5, 2023. He was electrocuted when the hedge trimmer he’d been given for the job touched a 16,000-volt hydro line in the hedges.
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Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration Training and Skills Development brought charges against Best Green Hedges director Sheldon Bestgreen and supervisor Steven Deans after conducting an investigation.
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The Evening Citizen
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Bestgreen pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the company took all reasonable steps to comply with the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act at the Manotick job site. The company was fined $45,000. Jennifer Chenier, Nicholas’ mother, previously said it was a slap in the face.
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Deans was then charged by the Ottawa Police Service after police opened an investigation into the circumstances of the death.
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Crown attorney Anne Fitzpatrick alleged in her opening submission on Monday that Deans, who had been working at Best Green Hedges for more than 10 years, showed a “reckless disregard” to Nicholas’ life by directing him to work in dangerous conditions, which violated Ontario workplace safety laws.
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The Crown also alleged Deans did not note on Nicholas’ job sheet that day that there were power lines located close to the hedge he was trimming, even though he noted them in job sheets six different times prior.
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Deans had a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm to his employees, which he failed to do, Fitzpatrick said.
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“There was no conceivable safe, permissible or legal manner by which Nick could trim the top of that hedge. By law, regulation, guidelines and well known and established practice, no unqualified person is to work inside what is called the limits of approach, which is the minimum safe distances to energize power lines,” Fitzpatrick told the court Monday.
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Jennifer Chenier was the first witness to be called to testify Monday.
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She told the court she was home the morning of May 5, 2023, and was asked to drop off lunch to her son and his coworker that day.
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