A Civil Action



A Civil Action

Introduction

In January 2003, it was reported by the FRONTLINE that many violations had been made by McWane Inc. in terms of safety and health that ultimately results in employee's injuries, fatalities, amputations, and illness through their plants of iron pipe all over the U.S. Employees were well aware about the hazards that were potential with their working conditions as some of the plants were more dangerous than working in a coal mine, and they were taking risks of their lives daily just for the work productivity. Several times, they thought to communicate that matter with the management, but then they became afraid about losing their jobs.

Civil actions are basically legal actions that are taken into place for protecting a private civil responsibility or for compelling a civil remedy which is different from the prosecution of crimes. These actions are in the form of judicial proceeding are brought by one party in opposition to other party and that is done for prevention of any wrong doing or unethical practices. In this paper, there will be a review and the elaboration of the civil action that was taken by civil authorities against McWane, as the company was involved in various activities that were causing losses to the lives of their workers.

Historical Record of McWane

Almost after the period of 5 years, the McWane plants were revisited by FRONTLINE for checking out that either any change had been made in response to the story aired. It was informed by employees that things started to modify after that and company has been changed. After the original broadcast of FRONTLINE, the Justice Department of the U.S. instantly launched an investigation and also admitted that the problem was really serious and it was highly essential to take action on that company several years before.

The largest plant of McWane was Tyler Pipe in Texas, and was the recur violator of the rules of safety. Since the year 1995, around 4,600 employees had been hurt during work with accidents such as amputations, injuries, and burns. Productivity was on top priority by the company without taking into consideration any risks to human's lives. Even though the workers, that had given the most parts of their lives to the company was embarrassed that why did they work with that company. There were hazardous machines that were required to operate by workers and company never concerned about the safety and health of workers. Workers were just forcibly bound to work in that risky and hazardous work environment, and they were not allowed even to take breaks for going bathroom.

Many workers were killed straightly while lifting those machines and many lost some of their limbs. But, the company was not even accredited for taking the death responsibility or any other loss of workers. There were no any leverage for workers in terms of their weekly productivity, and that was considered more importantly even at the cost of someone's accidental ...