A young man of only 22 was electrocuted Monday in an accident at the Hattiesburg-Laurel Regional Airport in Laurel, Missouri (MS). He was a member of a work crew from Meridian-based Woodall Electric Inc. and was contracted to do some runway lighting work at the airport when he suffered an electric shock.
I always hate to hear that a young person lost his life. There is no news yet of exactly how the accident happened and I’m sure the family has a lot of questions as well. I often get questions about on the job injures. So I’d like to clarify when separate lawsuits are allowed for on the job injuries at work.
One such instance is when there are faulty or defective products at work – situations where a worker is injured or dies because a ladder fails causing them to fall to the concrete floor would be an example where a lawsuit could be brought against the ladder seller or manufacturer if the failure of the ladder was caused by a product defect.
In any situation where a manufactured or leased product has a fault or defect which leads to an on the job injury this can be a situation where a separate negligence lawsuit may be brought against the manufacturer, seller or lesser of the faulty product. This could be one of those cases that results in wrongful death, but we don’t know yet until the final report.
However, an employee noted that this is not the first time an individual was killed in a workplace accident at the airport. “We had someone to die in an accident about 12 years ago,” he said. “It was an electrocution, too. But that one happened inside the airport.” I just hope if there are defective electrical products at this airport they quickly take steps to remedy it.
CA