Abstract: At approximately 9:15 a.m. on June 17, 2002, Employee #1 and a coworker of Safeway Inc. entered the back room/dock area. This area is where the store keeps empty soda trays, bread and eggs containers, empty banana boxes, and things that are to be picked up by warehouse truck drivers, such as pallets of milk crates, distress dry goods, recycled plastic bags, cardboard bales, and stacks of wood and plastic pallets. One end of the dock area is a solid concrete wall, the other end leads to a ramp and at the ground level there is a garbage compactor. The edge of the dock area is open and it is about 49 inches high from the ground up to the edge. One side of the dock is not used for deliveries anymore and a big garbage compactor is placed there. At the time of accident, the backdock area had empty dollies, bags of garbage from the Deli, empty milk crates and empty plastic pallets, laid up on their sides against a bale of crushed cardboard, and the area was pretty full with stuff to be picked up by a truck driver. The coworker sat on an empty milk crate, smoking a cigarette. As Employee #1 was stacking plastic pallets, few of them were placed on top of a bale of crushed cardboards. He continued adding more plastic pallets on top. These plastic pallets have foot on the bottom that interlock with holes in another plastic pallet when being stacked. The bale was placed near the open side edge of the dock. Employee #1 stepped back with his left foot and stepped off the dock, fracturing his left thigh bone.