North Carolina Injury Attorney Provides Important News to Injured Victims

In this section of the website, attorney Joe Miller, Esq. delivers current news articles on relevant topics to our clients such as information on North Carolina’s workers compensation claims and process. Call us today if you have been injured at work. Our law firm represents injured victims throughout North Carolina.

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Workers' Comp

• North Carolina Construction Worker Trapped by Boulder
  Oct 25, 2011

  Doing excavation work on the 7100 block of Robinson Church Road in East Charlotte, N.C., a construction worker was injured and trapped in his Bobcat bulldozer by a boulder sliding down the slope.
  
  Emergency crews from the Charlotte Fire Department were quickly on the site, and it took two dozen firefighters 36 minutes to free the worker from under the bulldozer. The man was transported to CMC University hospital where he was diagnosed with lower body injuries.
  
  In recent blog posts and articles we have repeatedly stressed the importance of implementing safety procedures on construction sites. In North Carolina, workers in the construction industry suffer the second highest incidence of accidental injuries, right behind the transportation industry.
  
  Far too often, construction workers are left to their own devices and initiatives, while employers and contractors hope for the best. Working in trenches and excavations, on scaffolds, roofs and ladders, in confined spaces and on utility lines, construction workers are at a far greater risk of severe work injuries than any worker in an industrial production plant where safety procedures are usually better implemented and controlled.
  

• Lenoir County Utility Worker Electrocuted By 7,200-Volt Underground Line
  Oct 22, 2011

  Rodney "Rock" Foster was working on an underground power line to restore electricity to homes along Truman Court and Truman Avenue in Kinston, North Carolina, when he was struck by a powerful shock from an energized 7,200-volt line.
  
  Suffering multiple burns, Foster was immediately taken to the N.C. Jaycee Burn Center in Chapel Hill where he is expected to spend two to three weeks.
  
  Foster is a 27-year veteran journeyman lineman, the highest level of electric line worker at the Public Services Department. Public Services director Rhonda Barwick said: "We had just celebrated 10 years without a loss accident, so it's an awful thing." Interim City Manager Bill Ellis, talking about Thursday's accident, declared that Foster is conscious and alert, talking to family and visitors, and is expected to remain in hospital for two to three weeks.
  
  Foster sustained second and third degree burns on the hands and legs with first and second degree burns on the chest.
  
  After hurricane Irene, when hundreds of workers scrambled through fallen electric lines and transformers to restore power, there had been no work accident, Barwick explained. Last Thursday's work was something they do every day.
  
  The attorneys of Accidental Injury Advocates wish Rodney Foster a speedy and complete recovery.
  

• Charlotte, N.C. Store Manager Abducted During Robbery Attempt
  Oct 17, 2011

  On Friday morning, a woman running the Family Dollar business in the 1500 block of E. Sugar Creek Road was opening the store when a man, dressed in black, rushed in.
  
  According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, the attacker was wearing a mask and approached the manager from behind. Holding a knife to her neck he requested money from the safe. The man was told the safe would not open for at least 10 more minutes, upon which the aggressor forced the woman into his car.
  
  The man drove her around for a while, until he pushed her out on Academy Street, not far from where the store is located. The victim fell at the bottom of Ella Ruffin's driveway, and started screaming for help banging on Ruffin's front door.
  
  "She was saying help me, help me, I've just been robbed," said Ella Ruffin who further explained that she knew the victim because she shops in her store all the time.
  
  Ruffin later declared she was thankful the attacker had been wearing a mask, not willing to think what would have happened to her if she had been able to identify him.
  
  Police detectives believe the assaulter ran away on foot, and have so far not been able to identify him.
  

• “Business Friendly” in North Carolina Shouldn’t Mean “Unsafe”
  Oct 10, 2011

  In a recent Star News editorial, the danger of cutting down state regulations that hamper businesses is squarely placed next to the importance of keeping workplaces safe in North Carolina.
  
  The recent fatal accident in the Progress Energy power plant, the 20th year remembrance of the Hamlet chicken plant fire, and the latest findings about shortcuts and negligence having caused the BP Horizon oil rig explosion and oil spill, all point to the crucial role of law enforcement.
  
  Many regulations become obsolete or unnecessary, often because their expected benefits are too limited in regard of excessive costs. These regulations should be reviewed and if necessary, eliminated. Existing rules to ensure that workers are kept safe at work should however be enforced, and far more than what is done now. Nothing, in the history of economic activity, has ever indicated that businesses can auto-regulate to protect workers, or the environment, when these regulations cost money. Safety and environmental rules are expensive and should be applied to all employers so as not to give undue advantage to those who disregard them. This means that the rules should be enforced, and that far more safety inspections should be conducted as is now the case.
  
  Streamlining existing red tape and excessive rules is necessary, but it cannot be done at the expense of dismantling the work safety and environmental protection offered the public and workers of North Carolina.
  

• Wilmington Power Plant Fined After Safety Inspection
  Oct 08, 2011

  Earlier this year, a 24-year-old technician died in an explosion while doing maintenance work at the Sutton coal-fired power plant in Wilmington.
  
  After North Carolina Department of Labor (DOL) officials uncovered nine work safety violations, the company, Progress Energy, was fined $31,500 and given 15 business days to pay.
  
  The safety inspection was the first in Progress Energy's 57-year history. This has raised the issue of the chronic lack of inspectors in North Carolina, which makes it almost impossible to enforce state and federal regulations preventively. It is not uncommon for work sites to remain without a safety inspection for decades. According to the Labor Department spokesman Neil O'Brient, inspectors dispatched to a workplace where a fatal accident has occurred frequently discover violations.
  
  Cory Roger, the instruments and control technician killed in the March 15, 2011 explosion, was working on a generator in a confined space. Hydrogen had leaked and accumulated in the area and a spark from a light or fan caused it to blow up.
  
  Progress Energy had an excellent safety record until the March 15 accident. This did not prevent the DOL inspectors to issue citations for not posting warning danger signs, for faulty or inexistent procedures to eliminate all hydrogen through purging and for the lack of explosion-free electrical components in the danger zone.
  

• North Carolina Labor Commissioner Clarifies Views on Worker Safety
  Sep 24, 2011

  In an interview with The Charlotte Observer, Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry made clarifying statements on what she and previous administrations have done to improve workplace safety in the last twenty years. The statement was prompted by the statewide remembrances of the devastating Imperial Foods chicken plant fire in Hamlet, N.C. that left 25 workers dead in 1991.
  
  Introducing the subject, Berry acknowledged that the N.C. Department of Labor cannot take all the credit for the state's success in reducing workplace injuries and fatalities. With only 114 inspectors to supervise over 200,000 businesses, it would be naïve to think that all progress was made through better law enforcement.
  
  Other factors are driving safety and health programs in different industries. The cost of insurance, a major burden for business owners, can only be kept low if safety procedures are in place and enforced. Employers now also have a clear view of the direct and indirect costs of workplace injuries and have implemented strong safety and health programs, hired safety directors and formed safety committees.
  
  Berry further stressed that the injury and illness rate has dropped to an all-time low of 3.1 in 2009, from 8.6 in 1992, a year after the Hamlet fire.
  
  Even though the 2010 number of OSHA inspections is down, it is still higher than during the previous two administrations. North Carolina, according to Berry, continues to be among the nationwide leaders in compliance inspections year after year.
  

• Worker Safety in North Carolina Twenty Years After Hamlet Fire
  Sep 21, 2011

  The September 3, 1991 fire at the Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet, N.C. shook the conscience of employers and authorities who had to face the horror of the accident and the criminal negligence that was behind it. 25 workers died in the chicken plant fire, some of them behind doors that were locked to prevent chicken theft. State OSHA officials had never inspected the plant.
  
  After the fact, State OSHA inspectors found more than 80 safety violations in the Hamlet plant. A ruptured hydraulic line had sprayed flammable fluid onto a deep fat fryer, setting off a fireball and filling the plant with smoke.
  
  Tom O'Connor heads the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. He says North Carolina's OSHA program is stronger than it was before the fire. "It was a big wake-up call," he said. "But I think a lot of the promises of really overhauling the program and making it a truly effective deterrent have just not come about."
  
  North Carolina officials point to declining injury and fatality rates as a measure of the positive trends. Others are not so sure. Workplace deaths in North Carolina reached a low in 2009, only to climb more than 40 percent last year. Safety violations deemed willful can lead to stiff penalties and can cost violators lucrative contracts. But in North Carolina, less than one in 1,000 OSHA violations were deemed willful in the last ten years.
  
  The number of workplace safety inspectors has remained the same since 1993, despite a 19 percent growth in the state's workforce, the Newstimes.com reports.
  

• Construction Worker Injured on Yadkin River Bridge
  Sep 12, 2011

  North Carolina has a sad track record regarding construction site accidents. Most of the time, when news media report a work accident, it is about the injury or death of a construction worker. Work accident statistics tend to confirm this impression year after year.
  
  Thursday afternoon, a worker was injured after he fell while working on the Yadkin River Bridge, WBTV.com reports.
  
  The worker was part of a crew doing construction work on the bridge. The emergency services were called just before 5 p.m. It took the rescue squad to do a horizontal lift of the victim, who was transported to the Millers Ferry Volunteer Fire Department, from where he was airlifted to Baptist Hospital.
  
  The name of the injured worker and nature of his injuries have not been released. There were also no further details on how the accident happened and what caused it.
  
  Many building and construction site work accidents are caused by a lack of supervision and training of the workers who constantly have to adjust to a new work environment, different co-workers and different tasks, tools and machinery. Procedures often are either known, or not enforced. Protective gear is not always at hand or properly used. These are the basic ingredients for accidents waiting to happen.
  

• Construction Worker Burned While Working on Truck Boom
  Sep 08, 2011

  Wednesday last week, when workers were replacing a scoreboard at Broome High School's football field, the truck's boom bent causing the new scoreboard to fall to the ground.
  
  One of the workers came back to the field the next day to find a way to remove the truck, which could not be driven the prior day because its damaged extended boom folded to the ground.
  
  The worker, an employee of Lipscomb Signs of Forest City, N.C., proceeded to disassemble the boom using a cutting torch. While cutting through the metal, a hydraulic line was severed, spraying ignited oil over the man, according to a GoUpstate.com report.
  
  Greg Mack, assistant superintendant for finance and operations for Spartanburg County School District 3, said that Lipscomb Signs was working as a subcontractor for the Electro-Mech scoreboard company.
  
  A school nurse and paramedics cared for the injured worker until he could be airlifted to a hospital - Augusta in Georgia - that specializes in treating burns.
  
  At this time, the extent of the worker's burn injuries is not known. Lipscomb Signs was unavailable for comments on the incident.
  
  This unfortunate accident shows, once again, how construction workers can be at risk by taking initiatives on distant construction sites without specific supervision or work procedure. Hydraulic systems always work with oil under pressure. Cutting the boom without first emptying the hydraulic lines was a serious mistake.
  

• Work Zone Safety: What North Carolina has Done
  Sep 06, 2011

  Twenty-two years ago, the NC Department of Transportation created the Work Zone Safety Program aiming at significantly reducing the number of work zone injuries and fatalities in North Carolina. Work zones are designated areas on a street or highway where construction is taking place.
  
  The program has something to show for. Work zone crashes have dropped every year from 5,896 in 2004 to 2,125 in 2009. Fatalities have followed the same trend, declining from 50 in 2004 to 11 in 2009. These excellent results stem from the relentless education, initiatives, campaigns and research over the years to make work zones safer for motorists and workers alike.
  
  Even though 4 out of every 5 persons killed in work zone crashes are motorists, speeding cars are very dangerous to construction workers as well. Typically, work zones are crowded places where workers and machinery are surrounded by traffic moving on narrow lanes.
  
  Any car pileup or rear-ending accident is likely to create a chain reaction of cars swerving into the work zone, endangering workers.
  
  Work zone speed is limited for a number of reasons:
  

  • Motorists are distracted by the construction site activity and equipment;
  • Narrow lanes do not leave any room to avoid a stopped vehicle;
  • Lanes may follow unexpected curved paths;
  • Vehicles tend to follow each other too closely;
  • Traffic may have to stop at any time to allow workers or equipment to move.
  
  Speeding motorists are often subjected to hefty fines in work zones, another good reason to slow down and respect the environment of those who work on building or maintaining our highway network.