Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

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Reports late last week that Blue Bell, the troubled Texas-based ice cream company, “will lay off more than a third of its workforce following a series of listeria illnesses linked to its ice cream,” according to the Associated Press, are the latest example of a company putting its profits ahead of responsibility to its workers or to society at large.

As the news agency reports “the 108-year old company’s production plants in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama have been closed since Blue Bell issued a full recall in April. The company’s ice cream has been linked to listeria illnesses in four states, including three deaths in Kansas.” Though the article quotes the company’s CEO saying “our employees are part of our family” it is difficult to balance that statement against revelations by the Houston Chronicle that the company knew it was distributing unsafe products two years ago, but kept the matter secret and continued with business as usual.

“Blue Bell Creameries found strong evidence of listeria in its Broken Arrow, Oklahoma plant as early as 2013 but failed to improve its sanitation programs, according to findings released… by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,” the newspaper reported last week.

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A recent Associated Press article republished by The Oregonian reported that Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Division has fined a Salem company and the Oregon Department of Transportation for separate incidents that led to worker deaths. The deaths raise both possible Oregon wrongful death and employment liability law issues but, more immediately, leave open questions about the effectiveness of OSHA’s fines themselves.

According to the news agency, citing the East Oregonian newspaper, OSHA fined a Salem-based concrete company “$840 for not ensuring safe work conditions, which led to the death” of a 64-year old man employed by the company. “The company was installing rumble strips at the paving project on Interstate 84 west of Boardman when (he) was run over by a pickup towing equipment operated by another employee.”

The agency also fined the state transportation agency $3500 over the death of a highway maintenance crew member who was “paving Highway 320 when a dump truck backed up and ran over him.”

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An article that appeared this week in the New York Times detailed the legal struggles of some of the victims of General Motors’ corporate negligence – struggles made worse by misguided laws designed to protect corporate bottom lines at the expense of public health and safety.

As I have written about many times this year, the giant auto maker is in serious legal trouble as evidence has emerged that it knew for years about defects in its cars’ ignition switches but did little to fix them. As the Times notes, “Today, at least 42 people are known to have died in crashes linked to the defective ignition switch, and both GM and federal safety regulators have come under fire for allowing the danger to linger for more than a decade.”

What could make a situation like this even worse? A legal system that limits the damages a bereaved family can collect. The Times article details the struggle of two Wisconsin families. Both lost loved ones to the GM defect, but neither was able to get any Wisconsin attorney to take their case because of a state law capping damage awards at $350,000. Every law firm approached by both families eventually decided that the limit on potential damages made it impossible for them to fight a huge company like GM without ultimately losing money.

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The death of a patient at the Oregon State Hospital one year ago next week has led to the filing of a lawsuit, according to a recent article in the Salem Statesman-Journal. The case raises noteworthy Oregon wrongful death issues, and is worth exploring here.

According to the newspaper, the man’s family alleges that his “death was the direct result of hospital staff retaliating when he alerted police and the media to patient sexual abuse in the hospital.” The 48-year-old man died last January “after telling friends and family he feared for his life.”

The newspaper reports that in August 2013 the man had alerted hospital officials to an alleged case of sexual abuse involving a nurse and a patient. When the man felt the hospital did not react appropriately he “told the Oregon State Police, the Statesman-Journal and The Oregonian.” Shortly afterwards the man was allegedly moved to a different ward, put under round-the-clock watch by the hospital staff and given medications that “put him in a state of near-constant sedation.” The lawsuit filed by his family alleges that all of this was unnecessary and significantly contributed to the man’s death.

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Investigators from Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration are looking into a possible Oregon industrial accident that claimed the life of a Scappoose woman on Thanksgiving Day.

According to a report in The Oregonian the 43-year-old woman “died Thursday afternoon in an explosion that investigators believe was started by sparks from a metal grinder at an industrial work site.” The fact that, according to the local sheriff’s office, the site of the accident was being leased by a trucking company from a third party may prove to be significant in determining whether this incident meets the legal definition of an Oregon industrial accident.

Third-party liability is often overlooked in reporting on incidents like this, but is important nonetheless. Under Oregon law a company or a property owner’s duty to provide a safe workplace extends to sub-contractors as well as its employees. While we obviously cannot draw any firm conclusions based solely on the short piece in The Oregonian, it will be important for OOSHA investigators and, in turn, the courts to consider where ultimate responsibility for this fatal accident may lie.

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A recent story in the Salem Statesman-Journal highlighted some critical changes the ODOT is now beginning to implement in the name of traffic safety, but did an equally good job of drawing attention to how those changes get approved.

The article focused on the September 24 death of a well-known Salem-area psychiatrist in a fatal Oregon car crash on I-5. According to the newspaper the accident took place when a vehicle traveling the interstate highway in the other direction crossed the median. The psychiatrist died at the scene. A colleague who was travelling with him died at an area hospital a few days later from injuries suffered in the crash.

The circumstances of the accident raise longer-term questions about Oregon wrongful death, and whether the fatal crash may prompt a legal action. More immediately, what made the reaction to this accident different was the outpouring of emotion from the Salem community, an outpouring which only increased when the Statesman-Journal revealed “that in the previous 10 years there had been 20 crashes along I-5 in Salem that involved vehicles crossing the center median into oncoming traffic.” The paper noted that the ODOT has plans to install simple cable-like barriers along that stretch of the highway. Cable barriers have been shown to be a relatively inexpensive way to prevent crossover crashes. The paper also discovered, however, that bureaucracy and political infighting had led to progress implementing the plan to install the barriers moving slowly at best. Indeed, a low-bidder to carry out the work was not scheduled to be selected until next February, even though, the paper reported, a decision in principle to move forward had been reached some time ago.

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An article published in Friday’s New York Times brings the issue of General Motors and its massive recalls sharply back into focus. It tells the story of a 27-year-old Virginia woman who died in a car crash only days after receiving a recall notice on her 2006 Saturn. That notice concerned the ignition switch issue that has received so much media attention this year. It is also noteworthy that it was the third issue for which her car had been recalled. It is useful to be reminded that the GM recall story is far from over – but several details buried deep inside the article are points of special concern.

The victim in the crash highlighted by the article died earlier this year. That fact is significant, because even though the defects in GM cars stretch back many years the fatal crashes associated with them have been seen by most people as something that happened several years ago and is only now traceable to the company’s negligence. The article notes that as of this week the mediator administering a fund to compensate victims “had determined that 21 deaths were eligible, raising GM’s longstanding death tally of 13 by more than 50 percent.”

Equally disturbing (though, admittedly, not a new development for anyone who has followed this issue closely) is the paper’s reporting that “during months of outcry over GM’s handling of the (ignition) switch issue, as investigations and lawsuits mounted, the company has fought any effort to get the recalled cars off the road until they are repaired… To date, hundreds of thousands of cars remain on the road, and the automaker continues to maintain that they are safe.”

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The death this week of a 33-year-old Mill City man is being investigated by the sheriff’s office in Linn County but, based on a report in the Salem Statesman-Journal, there are strong indications that it fits the definition of an Oregon industrial accident.

As I wrote in this space just a few days ago, the lumber industry has one of the highest rates of workplace fatalities here in a state where workplace deaths rose last year, even as they declined nationwide. According to the Statesman-Journal this particular accident took place on Wednesday in Mill City. The victim is reported to have been at work in a lumber mill “repairing a wood press when it activated and crushed him.”

“Police are investigating the situation along with the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA,” according to the newspaper. One of the things they will surely look at is whether this fatality should be classified as an Oregon industrial accident. Oregon law requires that machinery, particularly potentially dangerous machinery, be serviced properly and that workers operating and maintaining it have proper training. It is disturbing to read that a wood press activated at a point when it should not have been connected to a power supply at all. In lumber mills and other potentially dangerous workplaces proper “Lockout/Tagout” procedures, like those outlined by the US Department of Labor (see this link) are essential. Rules like this do not represent onerous government regulation but, rather, are essential safety measures designed to protect workers from employers who might be tempted to cut corners to put a few extra dollars onto the bottom line.

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A ruling last week by the Oregon Court of Appeals broadens the traditional interpretation of our state’s dram shop laws and merits closer examination. According to an account published in The Oregonian the decision in a wrongful death lawsuit established that “party hosts whose invitees bring their own alcohol can still be held liable if drunken guests hurt themselves or others.”

The case is formally known as Baker v Croslin. As detailed by the newspaper, the facts of this important case are as follows: a man died in a 2010 shooting incident “after a night of extensive drinking and gunplay at a house party in Northeast Portland.” The party host “was convicted of criminally negligent homicide” but the victim’s widow also filed an Oregon wrongful death lawsuit.

“Under Oregon law, a party host can be held liable for damages caused by intoxicated guests if the host provided the alcohol to a visibly intoxicated guest, and if the host ‘substantially contributed to the intoxication of the guest,’” the newspaper notes. This is a succinct description of Oregon dram shop law – something about which I have written on this blog on numerous occasions. The Dram Shop Law is designed to encourage responsibility on the part of people serving or selling alcohol. We often talk about it in the context of drunk driving, though the details of this case are a powerful reminder that the consequences of reckless alcohol use extend far beyond cars and roads.

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On Friday General Motors announced yet another expansion of the widening recall of its small cars. According to the New York Times, the company “is expanding its ignition-switch recall to include an additional 971,000 small cars worldwide, including 824,000 in the United States, that may have been previously repaired with defective switches.”

As I noted in a post earlier this month, well before today’s announcement GM had already recalled more than a million cars built since the 2003 model year because of a defect that may lead the ignition switch to cut off. That, in turn, could mean that air bags fail to deploy in the event of a crash. As the latest developments indicate it is now clear that many cars had the faulty switches added to them when they went in for repairs.

More disturbing, however, are the continuing revelations about the way in which GM has handled this scandal. In a move that may yet lead to wrongful death lawsuits, company documents have shown that GM misled grieving families for years, telling those who had lost loved-one in crashes linked to the flaw “that it did not have enough evidence of any defect in their cars, interviews letters and legal documents show.” This happened even as the company was internally debating the best way to fix the problem, the newspaper reports.

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