The owner of a British tanning firm was sentenced today to 56 days in jail after a woman suffered 65 per cent burns while using a faulty sunbed she had hired from him.
Terrence Howells was jailed at Newcastle-under-Lyme magistrates court in Staffordshire after pleading guilty to charges under electrical equipment safety and consumer protection legislation.
Melanie Wraith, 35, suffered an electric shock when the canopy of a machine she was using collapsed, causing her to lose consciousness.
She awoke more than 2-1/2 hours later, after she started to vomit, and was able raise the alarm with neighbours.
Wraith, from Leek, Staffordshire, stopped breathing for a short time and had to be revived in the ambulance as she was taken to hospital.
She was later transferred to a specialist burns unit in Birmingham where she remained for two days.
A spokesman for Staffordshire County Council, which brought the charges, said Howells, 51, from Stoke-on-Trent, was released on bail pending an appeal against the sentence.
Wraith hired the equipment after seeing a newspaper advert for "Supertan," a firm run by Howells from his home.
The sunbed was later examined by an electrical engineer who said that warnings, required by law to be visible on the canopy, were missing or had been painted over.
Live parts of the machine were not suitably protected and timers should have been backed up with a secondary device to act as a fail-safe.
Howells had also removed a spring from the machine which prevented the top canopy falling below a safe minimum height.