This decade my law firm has prosecuted two products liability lawsuits against the same envelope manufacturer on behalf of workers who suffered crush injury accidents on machines lacking proper safeguards.
In both cases, the workers suffered the same type of injury which occurred on the same type of machine as a result of the same defect. And both workers were employed by the same company at the same plant.
How can there be repeated worker injuries caused by defective products and unsafe work environments? The answer in a nutshell is that state and federal regulations are often drafted to protect manufacturers, and workers compensation statutes insulate employers from tort liability.
As a result, there are tragedies such as have recently occurred at facilities owned by Cintas Corporation.
The Associated Press reports that, in March 2007, Eleazar Torres-Gomez died after he fell into a 300-degree industrial dryer at a Cintas laundry in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The company was fined $2.8 million by OSHA for unsafe practices and inadequate worker training. It posted sales of almost $4 billion in fiscal 2008.
A short time beforehand, a worker at a Cintas facility in Yakima, Washington had his arm shattered in an accident involving an industrial washer.
In the year and a half after Torres-Gomez’s death, OSHA and state authorities cited at least eight plants in six states operated by Cintas for similar hazards.
“These fines are parking tickets, and these companies can afford to pay parking tickets,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, an expert at Cornell University on labor-management issues.
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