The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 was created and passed with the goal of preventing workers from being seriously injured or killed while at their workplace. This law requires the employers to provide a safe workplace that is free from any known hazards. The Act also created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sets the regulations about worker safety and enforces these standards.
Unfortunately, many companies avoid removing all known hazards from their workspace, and even when faced with an OSHA fine do not take every measure they can to ensure their employee’s safety. When a worker is killed on the job due to hazards the employer knew about it is considered a wrongful death, and has legal consequences for the employer.
What is a Wrongful Death?
A death is considered wrongful when it is caused by the negligence or an unlawful act by another person, business, or organization. It can also be caused by a combination of a person and a non-person; an employee and a company can both be at fault. The negligence can be either intentional or unintentional for it to still be considered a wrongful death.
Surviving relatives can bring a claim against the party responsible for the wrongful death, and these wrongful death cases can be for both a civil claim and a criminal claim. In a civil claim the relatives are trying to recover a monetary compensation for their loss, paid for by the party responsible. In a criminal claim, the party must have acted intentionally or recklessly, but if they are guilty they can be sentenced to prison.
When a wrongful death claim is filed three things need to be established:
1. Duty. This is when the defendant owed a duty of safety to the victims.
2. Breach. This happens when the duty is not provided to the victims.
3. Cause. This is the connection that proves that the breach of duty led to the accident.
Wrongful death from explosions
One wrongful death in the workplace we work to prevent is death from explosions, specifically ones caused by a buildup of combustible dust. OSHA and the NFPA have set forward regulations and standards that specify what is needed to prevent a dust explosion and how to safely remove this hazard from the workplace.
Since an employer is required by the law to provide a safe work environment they can be held liable if they cut corners or don’t properly take care of the issue and an explosion occurs. In many explosions the company has been previously warned and even cited about the hazards, and did not take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation. When the inevitable explosion occurred they were found to be criminally negligent, which resulted in jail time and often enough financial penalties to shut down the business.
