Who Should Pay?

Usman Javed Zuberi

Dr Muhammad Sharjeel

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♦ In your judgment, and from an ethical point
of view, should Turner Construction and/or
B&C Steel pay for all or part of the
$2,428,000 (if part, indicate which part)?
Explain your view.

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Case: Turner Construction contracting
B&C Steel for the installation of bridge.
Turner Construction should restrict B&C
Steel to comply all safety measures during
installation of river bridge. Turner’s
Construction should held partially
responsible for this case, for not
reinforcing a proper code of ethics for its
subjects.

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Case:"a pattern of negligence in constructing
and assembling the bridge, from the time
that the bridge was received until the time it
was installed."
(1) B&C's trucks carrying the bridge parts
were not unloaded where the bridge was to
be assembled.
(2) B&C's poor planning resulted in several
problems in moving the bridge closer to the
water, including failure to note the location
of a fence, concrete guardrails, and a set of
trolley tracks in the bridge's path.
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(3) B&C personnel initially assembled the
bridge upside down.
(4) a B&C truck hit a power wire causing a
small fire which required the fire
department's response.
(5) B&C did not arrange for the power lines
to be disabled before the bridge was moved
beneath them.

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Working Conditions: Health and Safety
♦ Facts and Figures
 Workplace Injuries
• 4,700,000 workplace injuries and 5,000 fatal
on-the-job accidents/yr
– 10% of the workforce suffers an on job
related injury or illness each year
– resulting in loss of over 31 million work-
days annually
♦ Cost of work-related deaths & injuries in 2002 is
estimated $40 billion of direct costs (medical costs
and payments to workers).

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♦ $240 billion of indirect costs (lost
productivity, overtime, etc.)
♦ Trends in on the job deaths & disabling
injuries 1970-2001
 deaths: trended downward from 18 per 100,000
to 4 per 100,000
 disabling injuries: totals rose from 2.2
million/year to 3.9 million/year

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♦ The Firm's Duties to the Employee: the basic
obligation the employer owes to the employee on
the "rational structure" view are
 to provide them with the compensation they
have freely and knowingly agreed to receive in
exchange for their services
 to provide them with working conditions they
have freely and knowingly agreed to accept
♦ Main issues relate to the question of how free and
knowing the worker's consent.
 the fairness of the wage
 the fairness of the working conditions

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♦ Contractual Basis of Organization; focuses
on two reciprocal sets of obligations
Employees
 to obey organizational superiors
 to pursue the organization's goals
 not to pursue conflicting goals
Employers
 to provide employees with a fair wage
 and fair working conditions

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Organization’s Duties
 offer wages that reflect the risk-premium
prevalent in other similar but competitive labor
markets
• e.g., coal mine owner might compare risk-premiums
paid asbestos removal workers
 provide workers with suitable health insurance
programs to cover unknown hazards
 research the health hazards that accompany
each job and make all such information readily
available to workers.

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♦ The Caring Organization
Caring
organization approach emphasizes non-power
relations: cooperation friendship, respect, care
♦ Potential Competitive Benefits for Organizations
increase productivity due to reduced friction
♦ recruitment advantages: due to desirability of
working conditions
♦ better customer relations: customer loyalty, repeat
business, word-of-mouth recommendations

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♦ In our opinion, based on above arguments;
♦ Both Turner construction and B&C Steel are
partly responsible for the accident that caused
economic and non-economic loss.
♦ Non economic losses for Turner Construction and
B&C Steel includes distorted image due to
accidents on installation site.
♦ John Goodrich, the project superintendent on the
Invesco Field construction, testified it was his
"understanding that Mr. Elliot was there to help
and direct the erection of the bridge, of putting the
parts and pieces together.“
♦ Therefore; all three parties are collectively
responsible for the incident and should pay a part.

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♦ In your judgment, and from an ethical point
of view, should Elliot be held wholly or
partially responsible for his injuries and left
to shoulder all or part of the $2,428,000
cost of his injuries (if part, indicate which
part)? Explain your view.

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♦ Case: Elliot was there to help during the
process but he gave late instruction of
OSHA all stop due to his impaired
judgment during the process of
construction.

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Moral Responsibility: A person is morally
responsible only for those acts and their foreseen
injurious effects of deliberate acts or omissions.
♦ commission
 knowingly and freely performing or bringing
about
 what it was morally wrong for the person to
perform or bring about
♦ omission
 knowingly and freely failing to perform or to
prevent
 which it was morally wrong for the person to
fail to perform or prevent
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♦ Mitigating Conditions: partially absolve the
agent of blame: diminish responsibility
Circumstances which leave a person
uncertain but not altogether unsure about
what they're doing.
♦ Retributive justice: concerned with the fair
imposition of punishments on those who do
wrong.

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♦ Partly Elliot is himself partly responsible
for his injuries, based upon the arguments
of moral responsibility and retributive
justice.
♦ Reasons behind the movement of bridge
after Elliot’s OSHA all-stop command
should be investigated.
♦ Negligence of B&C staff to halt operations
held B&C responsible partly for the injuries
of Elliot.

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♦ In your judgment, is the Colorado worker’s
compensation law to which Tuner
Construction appealed fair? Explain your
view.

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Case: The primary purpose of the Colorado
workers' compensation act "is to provide a
remedy for job-related injuries, without
regard to fault." (Colo. 1988). Through an
interrelated set of provisions, "the statutory
scheme grants an injured employee
compensation from the employer without
regard to negligence and, in return, the
responsible employer is granted immunity
from common-law negligence liability." To
be afforded this immunity, an employer
must be a "statutory employer" as defined
by the act. 8-19
♦ Any person, company, or corporation
operating or engaged in or conducting any
business by leasing or contracting out any
part of all of the work thereof to any lessee,
sublessee , contractor, or subcontractor . .
.shall be construed to be an employer as
defined in articles 40 to 47 of this title and
shall be liable . . . to pay compensation for
injury or death resulting there from to said
lessees, sublessees , contractors, and
subcontractors and their employees or
employees' dependents.
♦ 8-20
♦ Colo. Rev. Stat. § 8-41-401(1)(a). Relying
on this language, the district court
concluded that Turner Construction was not
a statutory employer because it did "not fall
within Section 8-41-401 with regard to its
dealings with Mabey." App. IV at 748. The
court read the statute as only covering those
situations where Mabey was a "lessee,
sublessee, contractor, or subcontractor."

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♦ We can held someone morally responsible
for an injury only when:
• The person caused or help cause it, or failed to prevent it when he could and
should have, and
• The person did so knowing what he or she was doing, and
• The person did so of his own free will

♦ The primary purpose of the Colorado

workers' compensation act is to provide a
remedy for job-related injuries, without
regard to fault.
♦ Therefore, appealing under a law that did
not take fault into account is un-ethical.

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♦ Compensatory Justice
Concerns restoring to
individuals what they have lost due to being
wronged by another
♦ Insofar as possible the wrongdoer should
restore the loss.

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