Since then, a handful of well-publicized trials have driven home the message that a new era of accountability is at hand. One of these, State of Indiana v. Ford Motor Co., in 1979, set a powerful legal precedent. In this case, the corporation was charged with reckless homicide following the deaths of three Indiana teenagers in a Pinto fuel-tank fire. Although Ford was ultimately acquitted, the case was a public-relations debacle for the auto company and a shot across the bow of corporate America.
Then, in 1985, came the seminal corporate-crime case of recent times, People of the State of Illinois v. Film Recovery Systems Inc.
Film Recovery Systems was no up-and-coming growth company in a glamorous industry. Operating out of a single plant in Elk Grove Village, Ill., Film Recovery extracted silver from used hospital X-ray and photographic film. Most of the plant employees were Mexican or Polish, did not possess legal working papers, and spoke little or no English. To extract the silver, they had first to dump the film into open vats of sodium cyanide in solution and then transfer the leached remnants to another tank. The plant was not ventilated, and visitors routinely complained of dizziness and nausea.
On February 10, 1983, one of Film Recovery's employees, 59-year-old Polish immigrant Stefan Golab, did more than complain about the fumes. Golab staggered outside and collapsed, unconscious. After efforts to revive him failed, he was pronounced dead from what a local medical examiner labeled "acute cyanide toxicity."
Over the next six months, an intensive investigation by Cook County, Ill., attorneys established a long list of incriminating details, including the facts that (1) Film Recovery workers seldom wore even the most rudimentary safety equipment; (2) workers were laboring in what amounted to an industrial gas chamber (one prosecutor called conditions there "positively Dickensian"); and (3) company executives not only played down the dangers of cyanide exposure but removed labeling that identified it as poisonous in the first place.
The prosecutors moved under an Illinois homicide statute targeting anyone who knowingly commits acts that "create a strong probability of death or serious bodily harm." Three Film Recovery managers -- the president, the plant manager, and the foreman -- were convicted of murder. In sentencing them each to 25 years in prison, Judge Ronald J. P. Banks likened their actions to those of a terrorist who "leaves a time bomb ticking in a public place."
Banks's choice of words was appropriate, for the Film Recovery trial ignited a firestorm of publicity and intense heat within the legal-prosecutor community. It also raised a fundamental question: is business in for an avalanche of criminal-liability cases?
Based on the evidence so far, that prospect seems unlikely. Convictions are still hard to come by, and state attorneys readily admit they have neither the legal authority nor the available work force to go after any but the egregious offenders.
"The nuance that escapes most people," says Milwaukee district attorney E. Michael McCann, another visible activist in the pro-liability movement, "is that it's not criminal to be negligent. To invoke [criminal sanctions], you have to have a real element of recklessness, whether it's in the design of the workplace, the procedures themselves, or the type of horseplay that turns out to be lethal."
"Fly-by-nighters like Film Recovery are not your basic Fortune 500 companies," adds Cook County assistant state's attorney Gary Leviton, a veteran of the Film Recovery prosecution. "The police and OSHA reports on them read like an Agatha Christie novel. You're just not going to see many [cases] as bad as this one. Still, as we always say, there's nothing like a dead body to let you seize the moral high ground."
To others, even corpses may not justify this legal intrusion into the workplace. In a supporting brief to the People of the State of Illinois v. Chicago Magnet Wire Corp. appeal, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States warned that U.S. business could fall prey to "thousands of states attorneys across the nation, operating under no uniform standard, charging about like loose cannous on the deck of a tossing ship."
"We view this as a major threat," says Paula Connelly, labor counsel for the National Chamber Litigation Center, an affiliate of the Chamber of Commerce. "Reckless conduct, for example, is a very broad standard -- far broader than what federal [OSHA] law addresses. Even penalties for willful violation fall far short of state murder statutes. Maybe the public wants this sort of backlash, but we'd rather see tougher state OSHA regulations instead."
Both sides agree that Film Recovery's degree of negligence isn't necessary to attract a district attorney's attention. Many companies cut corners. Safety guards break and aren't replaced quickly. The exhaust system in the delivery truck leaks, the production line moves too fast. Workers have to fill in for absentees on machines that they haven't been adequately trained to use. Suddently, Allen Andre makes a bad move and disappears into the slitter.
There are an estimated 100,000 work-related deaths annually. What prosecutors now want to know is: in how many cases did the boss know -- or have reason to know -- that conditions were unsafe? Did management not understand the level of risk, or did it exhibit a cynical disregard of the consequences?
Nowhere is this redefinition of business behavior being applied more dramatically than in Los Angeles County today. In a few months, L.A. prosecutors expect the photos of Allen Andre to become evidence in criminal action against Reliance Steel and four of its officials, who face charges of negligently operating the workplace so as to cause the death of Allen Andre. Similar charges are on file against four other Los Angeles -- based companies as well, and matters are "pending" in nearly 40 other investigations. Since mid-1985, Los Angeles County law-enforcement officers have been requested to treat every workplace fatality as a potential homicide, and a rollout program sending both a D.A. and an investigator to every such site has become a working model for state attorneys from Wisconsin to Texas.
