The Corporate Blotter;

 

Los Angeles may be on the cutting edge of the trend to hold corporate executives criminally responsible for workplace deaths. But presecutors and legislators have taken up the cause throughout the country. Consider the following:

* In Brooklyn, N.Y., the president, vice-president, and a foreman of a small thermometer manufacturing company face criminal assault and conspiracy charges in connection with a worker's disability due to mercury poisoning. In announcing the indictments, prosecutors characterized the company philosophy as "poison for profit" and leveled a blast at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's cutbacks in safety inspections. The Pymm Thermometer Corp. indictment by a Brooklyn grant jury marks the first time in the state that criminal charges have been brought against executives for exposure of workers to toxic substances.

* In Texas, three officials of Sabine Consolidated Inc. head to trial in Austin on charges of negligent homicide in the death of two workers in a trench cave-in. The charge, a Class A misdemeanor, is accompanied by an unusual petition for a double-damages judgment. In dismissing the threat of OSHA penalties as "a slap on the wrist," Travis County prosecuting attorney Ken Oden termed Sabine's responsibility for its workers' safety "obvious, grave, and ignored."

* In Troy, Mich., charges of involuntary manslaughter and conspiracy were pressed against two co-owners and a foreman of Jackson Enterprises Inc., a cable-TV installation company, after an employee driving a company van allegedly died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Although a district court judge dismissed most of the indictments, prosecutors are appealing the ruling while pursuing their case against the foreman.

* In Illinois, the State Court of Appeals will soon rule on a pair of landmark corporate-criminal liability cases, People of the State of Illinois v. Chicago Magnet Wire Corp. and People of the State Illinois v. Film Recovery Systems Inc. Taken together, these cases, which resulted in convictions, should fully test the "OSHA preempt" issue: that is, whether OSHA's legal charter precludes state efforts to "regulate the workplace" by policing work-site accidents -- fatality or no fatality. If the argument is dismissed, even more prosecutors are expected to approach workplace mishaps with (as one district attorney puts it) the "presumption of incident, not accident."

* In Washington, D.C., Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D.-Mich.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, is pushing a Corporate Criminal Liability Act that would impose penalties for company managers who "knowingly fail" to warn workers or federal agencies about safety and health hazards.