Landmark Verdict: Jury Slaps ADM With $6.7M Wrongful Death Judgment

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/4927/landmark_wrongful_death_judgment_against_adm_6.7_million_for_immigrant_work/

Friday September 18 4:00 pm

When he still a teenager, Francisco Moreno Garcia left his small hometown in southern Mexico for El Norte more than a decade ago to earn money for his family.

He worked in California, then he and his cousin headed to Decatur, Ill., where they heard there were good jobs at the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) bioproducts plant.

But the job he hoped would sustain his parents and siblings back in Mexico instead took his life. In a landmark decision on Sept. 11, a mostly white jury agreed that Garcia’s life was worth just as much as that of a wealthy white American, as attorney Donald Shapiro describes it, and ordered ADM to pay $6.7 million to Garcia’s family back in Mexico.

On March 23, 2007, Garcia, 26, was insulating pipes 15 feet in the air when a waste compression system malfunctioned, and he was sprayed with steam and hot caustic chemicals. As flesh literally sloughed off his body, Garcia struggled to free himself from his harness and tumbled to the ground, third degree burns covering 90 percent of his body.


The Archer Daniels Midland factory in Decatur, Ill. Francisco Moreno Garci was killed there due to faulty equipment in 2007. (Photo by Tobias Higbie)


For the next day and a half, horrified doctors and nurses tried to save him. His body bloated to twice its normal size from the infusion of fluids needed to sustain severe burn victims, and then his flesh began to turn black as necropsy set in. “At that point they basically gave up,” said Shapiro.

This story is, chillingly, not especially unusual. Latino immigrant workers have significantly higher workplace death and injury rates than other groups, as documented by a number of studies over the years, including a National Council of La Raza report this month.

FULL story at link.

[Canuckistanian]

1. My God, what a horrible death

His suffering must have been horrendous.

$6.7M is fair, I think. It will certainly make ADM a wee bit more serious about their safety practices.

AND about their use of "cheap" immigrant labor.

[Rincewind]

2. Here in Central Illinois

we say that ADM stands for "another dead man". They have a poor safety record.