Here comes a mining-related law suite that will expose the best and worst of the mining industry and the litigation industry. Attorneys for heirs of seven of the miners killed last August at the Utah Crandall Canyon Mine filed suite Wednesday against the Intermountain Power Agency (IPA) and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).
So ultimately my daughter and son-in-law will have to pay the heirs for the transgressions of Bob Murray. Seems downright unfair. And of course I will blog in anger about it.
The legal theory behind suing government entities that seemingly had nothing to do with the miners’ deaths is the old fashioned “deep-pocket” victim. Clearly Bob and his boys do not have enough cash to go after; far better to go after the wallets of the Los Angeles public that happens to use electricity partially generated by coal from the erstwhile mine.
Well maybe Bob and his boys have some money. One of the reports I read notes in an aside: “Ed Havas, a Salt Lake City attorney representing the 26 claimants, said “litigation against Murray entities and others is possible, and indeed likely, in the future.”
The legal basis of the liability of the two named entities, namely the Intermountain Power Agency and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is this:
Intermountain Power Agency is a co-owner of the Emery County mine. Much of the mine’s extracted coal goes to IPA’s power plants outside of Delta. The Los Angeles department is identified as an agent of IPA, serving as a “co-managing entity” on behalf of cities that have shares in IPA and the electricity it produces.
The notices contend both public agencies are responsible for the deaths and injuries by having “permitted mining activities to take place in the mine in an unreasonably dangerous and negligent manner.”
Both agencies knew of dangerous conditions in Crandall Canyon and “had the time and opportunity to avert the tragedy,” the notices added, but “caused or allowed to be implemented mining plans, procedures and practices that were unreasonably dangerous, negligent and posed an unreasonable risk of the harm that occurred.”
Damn it, maybe I should have warned my daughter to warn the folk who sell her electricity to warn the Bush administration to tell Stickler to do something. If the heirs’ lawyers prevail in this suite, it will be a vindication of the theory of community collective guilt. Some of the customers of the LADWP voted Republican in the last elections, so maybe they should pay up and leave those who voted Democrat off the hook. That line of reasoning is at least reasonable by the buck-stops-here theory–which is the basis of this law suite.
What happens when one spouse votes D and one spouse votes R, and there is but one electricity bill, is an interesting question. I suspect in my family’s case, that is the case.
Personally, I would recommend that the coal industry step up to the plate and pay these lawyers to go away. If they fail to get the lawyers to go away, the ill will that will be generated as people in Los Angles are forced to pay for the coal industry’s happenings will result in much more costly impositions being forced on the coal mining industry. In short, the cheapest way for the coal industry to keep the public off its back, is to pay these Utah lawyers to go back to Salt Lake City. Leave LA in peace. They have enough trouble right now with snow snarling the I5.
