As a group of twentysomethings bundled into a block of flats in Bethnal Green, they appeared in good spirits – smiling and laughing as Saturday night became Sunday morning. Kai Lewis even moved aside for a young woman, gently ushering her in front of him so they could all fit in the crowded lift. It was a small act of chivalry that would nearly cost him his life.
As Kai stepped inside, the lift shuddered. Then it came crashing down. In a sickening CCTV clip played to Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday (July 22), Kai instinctively made an attempt to escape, but it left him at the mercy of the top of the elevator car and the bottom of the door. He was trapped. Within seconds blood began to trickle from his waist. Then came the screams.
Freed by firefighters and airlifted to the Royal Free Hospital in Whitechapel, Kai was placed in a three-month induced coma and given a liver transplant at the age of just 23. Destined to take anti-rejection medication for the rest of his life, he says he remains so ‘petrified’ of lifts he can no longer work his dream job helping passengers at London Bridge station.
Meanwhile, it has taken nearly six years for justice to be meted out. The construction company responsible for the lift, Nofax Enterprises Limited, denied the offence in 2023 then reversed its plea this year after the prosecution dropped a second charge against Rubylake Investments Limited.
Abraham Dodi, 61, a director of Nofax and Rubylake, sat quietly in Court 16 on Tuesday, barely showing any emotion until the £40,000 fine was announced. When the figure came in, there was the faintest of smiles.
Mr Dodi, a London property developer with 53 active directorships recorded on Companies House, also appeared at Southwark Crown Court in March when Nofax was fined £63,000 over scaffolding health and safety violations. MyLondon reported on the case, which heard Mr Dodi’s company attempted to dupe safety inspectors with images of building equipment downloaded from Google.
On that occasion Nofax had been repeatedly warned about scaffolding breaches by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). This time, prosecutor Shauna Ritchie said HSE only became involved after Kai was crushed. On both occasions, Mr Dodi has avoided any personal responsibility for the law-breaking.
Though the prosecution has accepted Nofax produced a document called the ‘lift service protocol’, Ms Ritchie said there was no information about who wrote it, and it was not given to the lift engineer who had been sent out to inspect the lift.
Had the engineer seen the document, he would have known he was permitted to take the lift out of service and Kai might never have been injured. As Judge Sally-Ann Hales KC would point out later in the hearing: “There’s not much point having a protocol if he was not to know about it.”
Who are the key players and what happened?
Planning documents show Rubylake made applications to carry out extensions at 2-12 Cambridge Heath Road from 2011 onwards. A two-bed flat at the building was recently advertised for £2,100 a month, while 450 square foot of commercial office space appears on Rightmove at £1,500 a month.
While Rubylake are the owners of the building, Mr Dodi’s barrister said the company has no staff and any management of the building was the responsibility of Nofax, a micro-company with around a dozen staff members.
The lift in question was installed by ThysenKrupp in May 2016, and in September 2017 the German engineering company made a three-year agreement with Rubylake to carry out bi-annual maintenance.
But Nofax’s overriding responsibility for ensuring the maintenance actually happened was confirmed by a Nofax employee in her witness statement. “Since the property was finished and built, one of the things Nofax has been doing is taking care of the building, including managing the lifts. This is one of our tasks,” she told investigators.
A ThysenKrupp inspection in April 2018 raised concerns about there being no lock on the control cabinet, and there were more callouts to fix the lift on July 10, August 6, 7, and 8, and September 29, 2018. Allianz inspectors were then contracted to carry out Thorough Examination (TE), but they were unable to access the lift twice in January and July 2019 and received no response from Nofax, despite sending documents warning an inspection was overdue and it should be taken out of service if not inspected.
On September 3, 2019, a contracted Allianz engineer finally gained access to the lift for a TE where he found a number of Category A defects (the worst kind), including faults with the emergency communication system and emergency rescue system. Due to the defects, the engineer could not complete the examination and sent an emergency report to an email address provided by a person in the building claiming to be the Nofax manager.
As he had not been given sight of the ‘lift service protocol’ by Nofax, the engineer was unaware he was allowed to turn the lift off, so he left a sticker on the lift to say it was faulty. Meanwhile, his emergency email was only picked up by Nofax on September 5, apparently because the personal hotmail handed out by the staff member was not one regularly used by the company.
For reasons – which Judge Hales said ‘remain unclear’ – Nofax still failed to have the lift turned off, even after being handed the emergency email. At 12:31am on September 8, 2019, some five days after the dangerous faults were identified, Kai’s life was changed forever.
While Kai recovered in hospital, HSE inspectors examined the lift on September 17 and 24, serving a prohibition notice on Rubylake. The HSE investigation found there had been eight people in the lift, which had a capacity of six passengers, but the overloading detection device had not triggered and an issue with the brakes had not prevented the elevator car from hurtling downwards with the doors still open.
Nofax and Rubylake were eventually charged with offences under the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), but denied them at Westminster Magistrates Court in June 2023. Earlier this month, HSE told MyLondon the case was discontinued against Rubylake ‘due to a lack of evidence’, while Nofax reversed its plea to guilty on May 28 this year.
As well as the scaffolding violation prosecution earlier this year, Nofax has previous with the HSE going back more than a decade. The company was served a prohibition notice in July 2014 for a risk of falling from height; a prohibition notice in January 2017 for scaffolding issues; and an improvement notice in April 2018 for a lack of welfare facilities on the construction site. “The company has overall a poor health and safety record,” added Ms Ritchie.
How much money is involved?
When Judge Usha Karu fined Nofax £63,000 in March, she gave the company five years to pay. This week Ms Ritchie said that time period was ‘somewhat exceptional’. Fines act as punishment and deterrent, so extending the payment period softens their effect. But as Judge Karu made clear in her sentencing, it would make little sense to push the company under and receive no money at all.
The three years of company accounts provided by Nofax to the court this week show it has ‘wildly fluctuating’ profits, Ms Ritchie remarked. The filings showed £436,000 of intercompany loans were written off, and it was at one point operating with a loss of £147,000. Ms Ritchie also told the court Nofax insurers had reneged on their agreement due to the company failures, leaving the door open for a substantial civil claim from Kai.
Defence counsel Mark Ashley said the company had averaged £1.2m a year over the last five years, but profits had supposedly been affected by the rise in construction costs. Nofax posted a profit of £1.6m in 2022, down to £16,000 in 2023, and down again to -£144,000 in 2024. Mr Ashley said the company was now ‘improving’ but still ‘in a slightly difficult position’.
On Kai’s potential civil claim, Mr Ashley added: “We all know where the money is going to have to come from. The reality is somewhere down the line, there is going to be a fairly substantial award that will go to Mr Lewis.” Mr Ashley also claimed Mr Dodi does not take money or a wage from Nofax, adding: “He is effectively propping it up.”
While no potential figure was given in court (at one point Mr Ashley quipped ‘I’m not a personal injury lawyer’), civil claims can run into the millions. Earlier this year double amputee Sarah de Lagarde launched a £25m claim against Transport for London after being caught between the train and platform. A cyclist who lost her arm also won a seven-figure settlement against TfL last year.
‘He was simply returning from a night out with friends’
With Kai trapped in the lift, friends inside the elevator car lifted his legs to try and free him, while bystanders on the landing gave him water. Slowly, Kai began to lose feeling in his legs. Then, he passed out. Recalling events for a victim impact statement written in 2021, Kai said he could vaguely remember the swirl of firefighters, police officers, paramedics, and hospital staff who saved his life.
“I thought I was going to die,” said Kai, remembering how he struggled to breathe as people around him screamed in panic, “I could not speak. I felt powerless and traumatised. I could remember my parents trying to speak to me, and I could not work out what I was saying.”
Fearing he would never walk again, Kai left hospital in a wheelchair having lost nearly 40kg while drinking from a straw. Shaking uncontrollably, he was unable to write or cook. It left him feeling suicidal.
You don’t have to suffer in silence if you’re struggling with your mental health. Here are some groups you can contact when you need help.
Samaritans: Phone 116 123, 24 hours a day, or email [email protected] in confidence
Childline: Phone 0800 1111. Calls are free and won’t show up on your bill
PAPYRUS: For teens and young adults. Phone 0800 068 4141
Depression Alliance: The charity offers useful resources for people struggling.
Students Against Depression: For students who are depressed, have low mood, or are suicidal.
Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM): Phone 0800 58 58 58. For young men who are feeling unhappy.
James’ Place: Offering life-saving treatment to suicidal men in London and surrounding area.
For information on your local NHS urgent mental health helpline, visit here
In her sentencing remarks, Judge Hales said the engineer had mistakenly believed he did not have the authority to turn off the lift, despite finding life-threatening faults. But she did not blame him. “If Nofax had proper systems in place,” she observed, “What happened to Mr Lewis could have been avoided. I’m satisfied it was the failure by Nofax that caused significant harm to Mr Lewis.”
In reaching her decision on the level of fine, the judge also considered all the other people who were exposed to a serious risk of harm while the dodgy lift remained in operation, and Nofax’s previous HSE notices. “They do demonstrate a somewhat cavalier attitude to Health and Safety regulation,” she said.
But like Judge Karu, Judge Hales was forced to consider the effects of a large fine on an apparently struggling company, as well as the civil claim that is likely to come. The final fine was also adjusted downwards to £40,000 to allow for totality, due to the £63,000 it was ordered to pay earlier this year. Nofax must also pay £8,540 in costs by February next year.
After the sentence, HSE inspector Pippa Knott told MyLondon: “As a result of this company’s failures, a young man suffered life-changing injuries. He was simply returning from a night out with friends.
“The fine imposed on Nofax Enterprises Limited should underline to everyone in property management that the courts, and HSE, take these failures extremely seriously. We will not hesitate to take action against companies which do not do all that they should to keep people safe.”
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