On behalf of Kammholz Law PLLC posted in Wrongful Death on Friday, March 21, 2014.
When New York residents are killed on the job, it can leave a huge hole in the lives of their families — in more ways than one. On a personal level, of course, the loss of a loved one can never be truly made up for. But, in many cases, a worker who dies at work is often his or her family’s biggest, if not only, breadwinner. Losing that income can make a terrible situation for a family even worse. This is what two families in New Jersey had to confront in 2007, when they lost loved ones in a fatal accident at a dry cleaning plant. It took until recently for the lawsuits regarding the men’s deaths to be resolved and for the families to be awarded damages. The men, who were 42 and 41 years old, respectively, were sent to clean a 20,000-gallon steel tank that was used to dilute chemical waste generated by dry cleaning operations. The men did not know that their job would be extremely dangerous. In fact, one of them was protected only by surgical gloves, duct tape over his shoes and a flimsy face mask. The tank contained highly toxic sulfuric acid. The men’s skin was burned — one man had burns on almost 50 percent of his body — and their lungs paralyzed. The fumes were so bad that rescue workers had to wait several hours before attempting to enter the tank. When people die in accidents through the fault or negligence of others, their families often seek legal advice to determine how they can proceed. Source: The Star-Ledger, “$3.5M verdict for families of 2 workers killed at Linden dry cleaning plant in 2007,” Thomas Zambito, March 13, 2014