$17 Million given in worker's death
Jun 30, 2004OUTCOME: $17 Million Jury Trial Verdict
The following was printed verbatim in the Austin American Statesman in July 2004. "Lawyer: Manager at East Austin plant left woman trapped in machine. A Travis County jury awarded $17 million in d ... amages to the husband of a woman who died last year after she was pinned by machinery at a Borden Superior Dairies plant in East Austin. No one at the plant turned off the machine or called 911 for 20 minutes after employees noticed Faye Martinez was trapped, said Gary Rodriguez, one of the plaintiff's lawyers. 'The supervisor knew how to turn off the machine but he wouldn't do it and went looking for maintenance because he said it was their job to handle, and he didn't want to hurt the machinery,' Rodriguez said. The jury deliberated for a day after a 1 1/2 week trial in the 353rd District Court of Judge Margaret Cooper. No criminal charges were filed against the supervisor, although APD investigated the case. . . . Rick Reyna, a lawyer for the company declined to comment about the incident beyond saying that the company 'is still very saddened by the loss of Faye Martinez, who they really did consider to be a part of their family.' The damages against the plant's owner, Milk Products, LP, includes $10 million in actual damages and $7 million in punitive damages. Martinez's husband will receive the award; her teenage son settled out of court with the company. Martinez, 40, had worked at the plant for six months before she died. She usually loaded cases of milk on the loading dock, Rodriguez said. But when shed reported for a night shift at the plant on Jan. 23, 2003, she was assigned to a different area of the plant after another worker called in sick, Rodriguez said. The area that she reported to had machinery that pushed milk crates from one conveyor belt to another, he said. Martinez, who was not trained on how to operate the machinery, was left alone when another employee went on a break, Rodriguez said. No one knows exactly how she became pinned, but plaintiff's lawyers think, she tried to remove a crate from the back conveyor after the machinery stopped because she thought it would jam the conveyor belts one the line started again. Martinez apparently didn't know the crate was tripping a sensor that shutoff the pushing mechanism. . . . When she removed the crate, the mechanism came on and pushed a stack of six crates against Martinez's back. . . . 'it pinned her face against a steel wall of the back plate' . . . . The employee who had gone on a break came back but didn't know how to turn off the machine, so he got the supervisor, Rodriguez said. The supervisor left to find maintenance without turning off the machine, he said. 'Ten to fifteen employees showed up and none of them knew how to turn it off, so they were just sitting there watching her die of suffocation,' Rodriguez said. The plant had modified the machinery so that the off button was hidden, and there was no sign indicating where it was located, he said. 'Our community sent a message to corporate America today that workers' safety is just as important, if not more important, than company profits,' Rodriguez said."
