The Situation: Stubbs had an accident involving a press machine. He did not foll

Question

The Situation: Stubbs had an accident involving a press machine. He did not follow the instructions. He lost three fingers and received workers compensation. Shortly afterwards, he filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the press machine.

The company maintains OSHA records for 5 years. Tom, the Loss Control specialist has records for the last ten years. The older records expose the company to damages for lack of safeguards on the press machine. Such safeguards might have prevented the accident.

The Dilemma: Tom is asked to throw out the older five years worth of data. What should happen?

Option #1: If he destroyed the records, he can keep his job, but what are the legal ramifications of his actions? Is it his duty to report information that he has even if it puts a burden on the company?

I chose Option #1, which seems to be the unpopular one. I made this decision using the Utilitarian Perspective and considered the legal outcomes of keeping or destroying the old paperwork. To me, the status of Tom's job is irrelevant to the question. If he refused and was fired, he would be able to pursue legal options for unlawful termination. My focus was the fact that OSHA has strict rules regarding the length of time paperwork is kept and what is recorded in it. OSHA requires that the record keeping is kept for 5 years but part of that is an annual summary that must be updated every year. This summary update includes any incidents from the 5 year time frame. From the information given, it seemed to me that any possible incriminating evidence is so old it has fallen from even the annual summary update. This tells me that any deficiencies or problems with the machine had been solved long ago and the incident with resulting injury fell squarely on the employee. I think this allows for an ethical destruction of the outdated records that should have already been destroyed. This would not violate any law or OSHA regulation. Employee Stubbs was compensated for his loss through workman's compensation which the company had already paid for. I do not see a justification to subject the company to possible further loss when there is no legal reason to do so, just so one employee can attempt a cash grab from the manufacturer.

Your thoughts on this forum post. Provide details with a minimum of 7 sentences.

Explanation / Answer

In my opinion there are no chances of legal actions against the press machine company. Stubbs has undergone accident because of his fault that he did not follow the instructions. He has already availed the workers compensation from the employer. Hence his suit will not exist as he is already compensated for the loss and was negligent on his part. When we consider the matter regarding throwing out the five year older data also the company is not faulty on their side as the rules related to OSHA insist on keeping the data for only five years. Here Tom is storing the data for ten years and the older five year data can be thrown out. There is no point in refusing to throw the older data. He needs to ensure only past five year old data which will be still available. The older data will not affect the annual summary and is of no use as the company has tighten its safety standards which helped to avoid safety issues for long time other than Stubbs’s issue which happened merely because of the employee’s fault. Hence the employer can be held liable neither for the injury nor for insisting to throw the outdated data.

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