Tuna giant to make record payout following grisly worker death

[unhappycamper]

http://www.dw.com/en/tuna-giant-to-make-record-payout-following-grisly-worker-death/a-18646427

Bumble Bee Foods has been ordered to pay a $6 million settlement, with its plant managers sentenced, after a worker cooked to death in an industrial oven. Criminal prosecutions over worker fatalities are rare in the US.

Tuna giant to make record payout following grisly worker death
13.08.2015

The $6 million (5.4 million euro) settlement reached Wednesday is the largest payout involving a single worker death in California, prosecutors said.

Plant worker Jose Melena, 62, had been loading pallets of canned tuna inside a walk-in oven when a co-worker, thinking the man was on a bathroom break, shut the door and switched on the heat. Two hours later Melena's body was discovered after being cooked to death in the 132-degree Celsius heat.

"This is the worst circumstances of death I have ever, ever witnessed," said Hoon Chun, a veteran homicide prosecutor of more than two decades. "I think any person would prefer to be - if they had to die some way - would prefer to be shot or stabbed than to be slowly cooked in an oven. "

In a rare prosecution of a workplace fatality the plant operations director and former safety manager were each charged with three counts of violating state occupational health and safety regulations and causing a death.