Two firms have been £110,000 after a five-year-old girl was crushed to death by an electric gate.
Karolina Golabek was pinned to a wall by the waist-high electric gate outside her parents' flat.
Eyewitnesses said they saw the youngster - who was just five days away from her sixth birthday - lifelessly drop to the floor as she was freed, having been crushed by a force equivalent to 200kgs.
The schoolgirl's griefstricken father died nine months later, and her mother's life has been "shattered by grief", Cardiff Crown Court heard today.
A judge was told how the gate's default safety settings had been turned off, stopping it from slowing down or retracting when an obstruction had been caused.
John Glen Installation Services (Swansea) and Tremorfa Ltd admitted health and safety breaches in court this afternoon.
The former carried out work on the gate a year before the tragedy, while the latter had been contracted by Hafod Housing Association to maintain it.
John Glen Installation Services was handed a £60,000 fine, while Tremorfa will have to pay £50,000. Both also were ordered to pay £40,000 in costs.
Prosecuting counsel Andrew McGee insisted the dangers the gate posed should have been "easily foreseeable" but had not been recognised, making the gate a potentially "lethal piece of machinery".
The tragedy unfolded in the car park belonging to housing association owned flats in Brook Court, Bridgend on July 3, 2010.
The four metre long metal structure took 24 seconds to open and had a 17 second delay before closing automatically. It was operated by keypad as well as by key fob.
The gates had a range of safety settings, the safest of which was the factory setting.
However, this had been adjusted at installation after it was found the location at Brooke Court was on a slight gradient and stopped it from closing all the way.
It was adjusted so that the gate did not slow down before closing and did not "back-off" once it was obstructed.
Shortly before the incident, eyewitnesses said they saw Penybont Primary School pupil Karolina playing alone with a couple of cats nearby.
The court heard that one motorist entering the car-park had warned Karolina "to be careful" minutes before her death.
While no-one saw the moment Karolina was crushed, several residents saw its heartbreaking aftermath.
At around 5.20pm that day, resident June Wendy Phillips was pulling into the car park and saw the horrific site of little Karolina trapped.
She told the court in a statement: "I saw the girl slumped backwards and as soon as the gate was released her body fell to the ground."
Fellow resident Sian Robinson, who was looking out of his flat window, thought he could see a mannequin trapped - until the moment the gates were manually opened and Karolina flopped to the floor.
Paramedics raced to the scene and found the girl unconscious but still breathing.
But her condition rapidly deteriorated and her oxygen levels plummeted - causing irreversible brain damage.
Karolina was taken to the nearby Princess of Wales Hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly before 6pm.
A post-mortem later revealed she died as a result of "severe compression" injuries.
Two days following the death, experts from the Health and Safety Executive carried out a range of tests on the gate.
They found the force exerted by the gate as it closed would have been 2,000 newtons - around five times more than the British Standard recommendation.
HSE inspector Jamie Davies said the gate could have been fitted with an easily available "soft-edge" rubber strip at the end which would have reduced crushing forces tremendously.
Most tellingly, he said the settings on the gate meant it did not retract when obstructed.
The court was also told that warnings about safe impact force levels were written in capital letters in a manual for the gate's motor.
Mr McGee added: "John Glen did not appreciate the forces of the gate were too high and its failings were a causative factor of Karolina's death.
"They should have been aware of all the safety problems with the gate."
Mr McGee added that maintaining safety and the risks of trapping "should have been integral" for Tremorfa Ltd.
However, the proseuction did accept that both defendants' actions were "careless but not reckless".
Simon Morgan, defending John Glen Installation Services (Swansea), said his clients - a small family firm - were devastated for Karolina's parents.
Mr Morgan said the incident had a serious effect on the company financially and emotionally.
The court was told director Andrew Glen felt a great sense of responsibility and was now being treated for depression.
Andrew McLaughlin, representing Tremorfa Ltd, also offered his sympathy to a relative of the deceased present in court.
He said: "No-one could fail to be moved by what happened and the company offers its sincere apologies. It regrets that it cannot make amends for their loss."
Both firms also said they had improved their safety measures since 2010 - included the use of force metres when carrying out checks and were now members of the Gate Safe scheme.
The judge said the terrible death could have been avoided at "modest expense".
Within nine months of Karolina's death her father Jozef Golabek had died and her mother Barbara Michalak now suffers with depression.
A statement read from Ms Michalak said: "I died when she passed away. I will be shattered with grief for the rest of my life."