[Kevin]

Originally posted by KSig RC
While this is true (to the point of being nearly tautological), it doesn't really address the actual situation very well - we don't know if the explosion was even preventable, or related to a safety violation, do we?

I would argue mining is an inherently dangerous profession .

Mining is inherently dangerous, however, there are safety regulations that are set up to mitigate that danger. Not being a mining expert or having any knowledge of the situation (I actually think it's pretty overhyped and irrelevant compared to other things that somehow don't make the news cycle), I have no idea what took place, if it was preventable, etc. other than what I've learned from a cursory reading of headlines, this thread, and other sources.

As for what is generally the case with explosions though, it's typically pretty easy to prove where they came from, and reaching back last semester to my torts class, when a person's injury would not have ordinarily occured without someone's negligence, the thing that caused the harm is under the exclusive control of the defendant, the type of harm that occured was what might have been a reasonably foreseeable consequence of that type of negligence, and the plaintiff did not contribute to the injury through their own negligence, there's a presumption of negligence. There may of course be a lot of other regulations, statutes, etc. etc. that are involved here, none of which I have a clue about, but depending on what caused the explosion, these families may or may not have a case.

-- also whether the violation was related to a violation of the safety regulations is another item that might create a presumption of negligence.

Assuming all that is true, I'd expect punitives to be through the roof here considering that this company seems to have simply ignored safety recommendations and citations for violations of the regulations. There are big bucks here in all likelihood.

Also - could this be ANY LESS related to Enron? Seriously, people, stop rolling Enron out any time there's corporate scandel - it's not even top 10.

I agree. Enron = completely irrelevant. This thing is interesting all by itself.