Boston Accident Lawyer Blog

Usually, most of the legal stories giving rise to posts on this blog originate in or have to do with cases and legal issues in Massachusetts. However, a tragic incident at Yale University earlier this week, illustrates the importance of product liability law, and the impact it can have on making products safer for the Americans who use those products.

Scituate, Massachusetts resident Michele Dufault, a bright Yale University student, was killed earlier this week in a horrific incident involving a lathe at a machine shop on campus. Dufault, a senior at the Ivy League school who was majoring in physics and astronomy, was found at Yale’s Sterling Chemistry Laboratory at around 2:30 AM Thursday by other students in the building. The students immediately called New Haven police, but it was too late. A statement from Yale University president Richard C. Levin did not reveal whether Dufault died in the lab or later at a hospital. Nor was there a statement as of Friday evening, April 15, as to whether Dufault had been alone in the lab, or not.

This incident must have been absolutely horrific. I remember working on a lathe in high school machine shop. When I look back on those times, I’m surprised that I wasn’t injured, as well -- this machinery is very powerful, and extremely dangerous. For those unfamiliar with machine shop equipment, a lathe is a machine that is used to shape usually straight lengths of metal or wood by spinning it at extremely high speeds. (So fast that when spinning in the lathe, the length of wood or metal would look like a blur to the naked eye.) Carving tools are applied to the edges of the spinning wood or metal, to shape the material. By all available accounts of the incident, Ms. Dufault’s hair became caught in the lathe, pulling her head into the machinery.

Right now, Dufault’s family is deep in grief. The idea of losing a daughter or son at this tender moment in life, when all the promise in the world awaited her, is too tragic to adequately describe. Friends of Ms. Dufault have universally described her as brilliant, widely admired and a good friend. At Noble & Greenough School in the next town over from my Westwood office, in Dedham, Mass., headmaster Robert P. Henderson Jr., characterized Dufault as precocious and “Simply brilliant. She was a true intellectual,’’ Henderson said of the 2007 graduate. Dufault was also a student at an institution that I am very familiar with from my boyhood summers in Falmouth, Massachusetts - the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Dufault worked with scientists to design and operate undersea robotics.

The incident has triggered federal and internal university investigations of campus safety protocol. According to University President Richard Levin, until those reviews are completed, the university will limit undergraduate student access to school facilities with power equipment, and will also place additional personnel as monitors in the laboratories at all times. I'm sure Levin has spoken with Univeristy lawyers, as that is a smart immediate move.

But just as investigators from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) are presently trying to piece together the details of this accident, the question will eventually loom larger: Was this accident preventable, and if so, were there failures on the part of either the lathe manufacturer or the school – failures which, had they not been present, would have prevented this tragedy? In the case of machine shop equipment such as a lathe, several legal questions come to mind:

1) Were there unmistakably prominent and noticeable warnings on the machinery, advising that all loose clothing be secured, and keep clear of the moving parts of the machine?

2) More important: Were there equally prominent signs warning that any long hair worn by the user must be tied back and kept away from the machinery at all times? Warnings regarding loose clothing are common, but were there warnings about anyone using the machinery that had “long” hair, bangs, or hair in excess of shirt collar length?

3) Were there safety guards in place, to prevent loose clothing or hair from being accidentally caught in the machinery?

4) Was there an automatic, emergency braking system, when any foreign material became entangled by the equipment? Note: Similar emergency “braking” detectors have been developed and placed in use by manufacturers of circular saws and table saws. Ultra-sensitive detectors can actually sense if flesh or blood has suddenly been pulled or brought into the equipment. In that event, and emergency brake is activated to halt the equipment’s moving parts immediately.

5) Were the equipment and the University machine shop in compliance with all relevant and applicable OSHA regulations and standards?

It is far too soon for the Dufault family to consider these questions. But, eventually, these questions will need to be asked. Whether a product liability suit or possibly a wrongful death suit is called for against the manufacturer, designer or distributor of this equipment has yet to be determined. Product Liability is the area of law that governs the rights of persons who have been injured or even killed due to defective products. The “defect” in a product, could have occurred at several stages in the life of the product: It could be found to be in the design, manufacturing, distributing, advertising or even marketing of a product. This can be a broad definition, but in general, a product will usually be found to be “defective” if the danger the product posed could have been reasonably foreseen by either the manufacturer, or someone in the chain of production, distribution or marketing.

The process of investigating the forensic details of this horrible accident will be disturbing, to say the least. But if accidents like this are to be prevented in the future, or at least made less likely, this inquiry needs to be made. It is because of tort law and the right of citizens to sue for personal injuries and deaths caused by dangerous or defective products, that so many products in the U.S. are now made safer. The list runs on and on, but includes not only power equipment such as saws and nail stud guns, but cars, baby cribs, baby pajamas, electrical appliances, furnaces, and on.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Ms. Dufault’s family.

Yes, you read the title of this post correctly: Transocean Ltd., the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Rig that blew up last year and proceeded to spew at least 200 millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, is actually awarding financial bonuses to its senior executives for – of all things - the "best year in safety performance in our company's history."

I’ve seen a lot of examples of corporate arrogance, lies, greed and deceit, but this has to rank up there with some of the worst. This company contributed to probably the worst environmental disaster and toxic tort this nation has ever seen, with the full effects not yet even being fully measured or fully felt. Its negligence, documented as being fueled by corporate cost-cutting, resulted in the deaths of 11 oil rig workers. It partnered with two other companies – BP PLC and Halliburton, Inc., who flagrantly and consistently lied to the public and to the government about the true nature and extent of the disaster. It contributed to thousands of people losing their jobs or their careers in the commercial fishing and hospitality industries, who are still suffering economically – and it has the audacity to hand out millions in cash bonuses to its executives. As has been said before, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

In regulatory papers filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last Friday Transocean noted "the tragic loss of life" in the Gulf when the rig operated by BP PLC exploded last April. Large of them, wasn’t that? Despite the devastating fiasco that occurred on their rig, the company got out its bean counters, and found a way to claim that it still had an "exemplary" safety record, because supposedly Transocean “met or exceeded” certain internal (i.e., its own) safety objectives regarding the frequency and severity of its accidents. “Safety” accounts for approximately 25 per cent of senior executives' total cash bonuses at Transocean. Apprarently, greed and negligence account for the other 75 per cent. CEO Steve Newman’s bonus (alone) last year amounted to $374,062. In case you’re curious, the total pay works out as follows: A base salary of $850,000; “perks” of $622,057, which includes housing and vacation allowances (and other things); on top of the $374,062 bonus. Folded into this figure are also Transocean stock options valued at $1.9 million and deferred shares valued at $2 million.

In contrast, the average fisherman’s annual income in Louisiana, which was destroyed as the result of this ecological disaster? About $45,000.00. Annual income for a hotel room attendant, also destroyed from the loss of tourism dollars? About $32,000.00.

A commission appointed by President Barack Obama last year concluded that the explosion which set off the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, and which arguably represents the largest toxic tort in memory, was caused by a series of time and corporate cost-cutting decisions made by Transocean, BP and Halliburton Inc. The commission concluded these cost-cutting decisions created an “unacceptable amount of risk.” The response of Transocean and these other two huge, multi-billion dollar corporations to these findings? Denial of almost any and all legal liability. Stonewalling. Obfuscation. The legal process to determine ultimate liability and civil damages will take several years – which is just the way these companies want it. A certain federal law called the Jones Act, which governs liability for a variety of maritime civil actions and injuries, allows these companies to shield themselves from more serious legal and financial liability. The immediate punishment by the government for this gross negligence and corporate arrogance? Let’s put it this way: They’re all still in business. In fact, they’re handing out huge bonuses to their senior executives, for - -of the most insulting things they could claim – a “superior safety record.”

While most people may not have hear of it, the Jones Act is an interesting piece of federal legislation, that incorporated a great deal of tort “reform” in its passage. What this means is that it shielded a lot of maritime business operators from civil liability for various types of damages and personal injuries, and placed caps on the remaining types of damages that were allowed. That law, with all its tort “reforms”, is what is allowing these companies to thumb their noses at the people in the Gulf whose lives were so damaged by this cataclysmic environmental disaster, and at the larger American public.

Remember that the next time you hear someone from the Chamber of Commerce or the local hospital shout that what America needs is more “tort reform.”