B.C. mine contractor Procon Mining and Tunneling Ltd. was fined $97,750 Thursday afternoon for two violations of the Yukon Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Last August, the company plead guilty to one count of failing to properly maintain equipment and another of failing to adequately train employees in proper safety procedures.

Territorial court Judge John Faulkner heard a joint submission on the sentencing Thursday. It was presented by prosecutor Judy Clark and James Sutherland, counsel for the company.

Present at the trial were Jim Dales, vice-president of Procon Mining and Tunneling, as well as John Scott, Procon's director of human resources.

The charges stem from the Oct. 19, 2010 death of 20-year-old Paul Wentzell. An apprentice mechanic with Procon, he was working for the company at Wolverine Mine, near Ross River, when he was crushed by a driverless Toyota Land Cruiser.

His death was both tragic and preventable, the judge ruled.

Wentzell was working above ground when he was called to drive down a mineshaft to deliver a nozzle to the crew working below.

Finding the shaft blocked by a tractor, Wentzell parked and exited his vehicle.

Soon after, the emergency brake failed and the Land Cruiser began to roll down the 15 per cent grade slope, rolling over Wentzell and crushing him. He died in Whitehorse General Hospital later that day.

Clark said Wentzell had received some training, including underground training at another mine site and outdoor vehicle training. However, it was inadequate to prepare him for the situation that was to claim his life.

"His vehicle training had been outside at a Yellowknife training centre, on flat ground,” said Clark. "It was unrealistic terrain. It's just not the kind of of terrain that one would expect underground.”

Though Wentzell had received formal training, there had been little official oversight.

Wentzell had received an employee training manual and signed a document acknowledging he had read and understood it.

There were also daily safety briefs provided by the company and mandatory Sunday meetings. Those sessions frequently discussed aspects of mine safety, but records of attendance were often incomplete, said Clark.

Wentzell may have also lacked an understanding of the vehicle itself.

The Land Cruiser is equipped with three separate brake mechanisms. The first is a regular pedal brake, with the addition of a stick parking brake and a reserve emergency brake, engaged by pushing a button on the dashboard.

When Wentzell parked the Land Cruiser, he did not turn off the engine, turn his wheels to the wall of the tunnel or put blocks under his wheels, as is company policy.

The brake system failed because the front brake shoes were not making sufficient contact with the brake disk, causing the brakes to slip, said Sutherland.

"It appears that what happened is that Mr. Wentzell stopped the vehicle, pushed the button, thinking it was the parking brake, when it was in fact the emergency brake,” said Clark.

"He did not engage the stick brake. The stick brake might have held, but the emergency brake failed. He left the vehicle, and as he did, it began to roll and struck him. In this case, the injuries were very grave and were the cause of his death.”

Company record show that the Land Cruiser was past due for its next inspection, said Clark.

"It was due, but it didn't happen,” she said.

The maximum sentence for the offences was $150,000 for the first offence and $300,000 for subsequent offences.

The reason for the comparatively light fine, Faulkner said, is due to a sense of remorse on behalf of the company and changes it's made to safety practices.

Sutherland presented an image of Procon as an organization which began as a small business and through "hard work, good work and integrity,” expanded into an operation with 15 sites across Western Canada and the Eastern Arctic, employing approximately 1,000 workers.

Since the incident, the company has built on an already sound safety policy, said Sutherland. It has made a number of safety adjustments including hiring new safety officers, introducing new in-house supervisor training and performing an independent safety audit.

Wentzell's death also represented more than simply a financial loss for the company, the lawyer said.

According to Sutherland, several members of Wentzell's family have been employed with Procon since the company's founding, including Wentzell's father, who remains with Procon.

"Procon feels that this was such a tragedy,” said Sutherland. "Procon have been working very openly to put in place a number of new safety measures... and they are committed to ensuring that incidents like this never happen again.”

There were, however, some areas of disagreement between the two sides.

Sutherland said the manual refers to the emergency brake as a parking brake. On the day before the mishap, he said, the vehicle had been used on flat terrain and was thought to be safe.

A post-incident inspection also found all other aspects of the vehicle to be in good working order, he said.

Sutherland also pointed out that there was no way to know whether Wentzell was unaware of or simply disregarded safety policy, but that ultimately, the failure to adequately train the employee and inspect the vehicle did fall on the company.

Wentzell should also have been trained underground at the Wolverine site, the lawyer said.

The fatality will blemish the company's record within the industry.

Part of the consideration to grant contracts to companies like Procon, Sutherland explained, is based on their safety records, which, in Procon's case, is now tarnished.

"The company accepts this incident as a major hurdle, but accepts that this is how it should be,” said Sutherland.

The judge's ruling came down to setting an example for future deterrence.

"There were significant failures of duty here,” said the judge. "It cannot be forgotten that a fatality was the ultimate result.

"Deterrence must be the name of the game, and the corporate defendant is a large company with multiple operations, and so the fine is deemed appropriate in this case,” said Faulkner.

For the first violation, the company received a fine of $40,000.

For the second count, it was ordered to pay $45,000. There is also an additional surcharge of $12,750.

The company has three months to make payment.

Procon is currently in court, alongside Yukon Zinc, for charges in relation to another workplace death at the Wolverine Mine.