LITTLE ROCK — Allegations of safety violations at its Little Rock plant have Welspun Tubular LLC facing legal and regulatory actions.
Two lawsuits, including one for wrongful death, have been filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court against the Little Rock subsidiary of Welspun Corp. Ltd., an India-based pipe-maker. The company also is being fined by workplace safety regulators.
Gloria Bogar of Muskogee County, Okla., is suing Welspun for the “pain, suffering, injury and wrongful death” of her father, Frederick Bogar, according to a complaint.
Frederick Bogar, 61, of Jacksonville, was crushed in late December by a pipe at the 455,000-square-foot Welspun plant on Frazier Pike, Little Rock police said at the time.
Bogar, who died Dec. 21, was working for Elite Services of Oklahoma as an independent contractor at the Welspun site.
“His injuries and death were the direct result of the defendants’ negligence, and reckless disregard for safety,” the complaint says.
Welspun, which makes pipes for the oil and gas industry, opened its Little Rock plant in April 2009.
Defendants in the Bogar suit include Welspun companies, as well as the plant manager, Debasish Bhowmick, and another manager, Saleem Sawar.
Bogar alleges that Welspun disabled certain safety devices at the plant and failed to adequately inspect and maintain machinery and equipment.
Another worker, William Durham, of North Little Rock, also was trapped by the pipes and was injured but survived.
According to the complaint, Bogar pushed a “stop” button on machinery, intending to stop the pipes from moving, but the safety feature “did not operate.” Safety sensors that monitor the pipes’ movement “also did not operate,” it says.
“Upon information and belief, Welspun representatives disabled the subject safety equipment to ‘manual’ mode, thus effectively disabling certain safety equipment, including emergency stop devices and safety sensors,” the complaint says.
Moreover, the complaint says, Welspun had been warned before Bogar’s death that disabling the equipment “would one day kill somebody.”
Gloria Bogar is seeking a trial by jury.
The second suit was filed by John Pollard, a Pulaski County man who alleges that he was injured when he stepped into a hole at a Welspun parking lot while working as a security guard.
According to his complaint, Pollard was walking to his vehicle to make a security sweep of the facility when he stepped into the hole and broke several ribs.
Pollard was working for Bowling Security, which was contracted to provide security at Welspun, the suit says.
Pollard is alleging negligence by Welspun, including failure to maintain proper lighting, failure to follow its own maintenance policies and failing to repair the hole, which he says was left after a truck scale was removed.
Both suits were filed Friday.
Richard Janicki, a senior vice president for Welspun Pipes Inc., said that a statement in response to the suits and proposed fines wasn’t ready Tuesday afternoon.
Welspun has “proposed penalties” adding up to $88,000 from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration over allegations that it exposed workers to health and safety hazards, the department said in a release Monday.
“This company put its workers’ safety and health at risk by exposing them to a variety of hazardous working conditions,” Carlos Reynolds, director of OSHA’s Little Rock area office, said in the release.
OSHA said it began a safety and health inspection of the plant in August. The agency has issued 16 “serious” safety violations and five serious health violations, in addition to more minor ones, the release said.
Among the safety violations were failing to protect workers from “struck-by” hazards, failure to determine load capacities of cranes and failure to provide a self-closing fire door, OSHA said. Among health violations were failure to identify respiratory hazards, failure to provide training in hazard communication and failure to give hepatitis-B vaccinations for workers exposed to infectious materials, the agency said.
OSHA reports have documented several accidents before Bogar’s death. In June 2010, the company was fined $5,000 after an employee hurt his leg, and in October 2009, two workers were hurt after they fell 20 feet from a lift.
Business, Pages 27 on 02/02/2011