The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office has announced that Bumble Bee Foods will be paying USD 6 million (EUR million) for fines, restitution and safety improvements over the 2012 incident where a worker was accidentally cooked to death in one of the company’s tuna ovens.
“You don’t have warm blood running in your veins if you’re not affected by the way this guy died. It’s horrific,” Hoon Chun, assistant head deputy district attorney for the office’s Consumer Protection Division, told the Los Angeles Times.
The settlement concerns Jose Melena, 62, who was working at the company’s Santa Fe Springs plant when he became trapped inside a cooking oven for sterilizing cans of tuna. Other workers, unaware he was inside, turned the 35-foot pressure cooker on, resulting in Melena’s death.
According to the paper, the settlement represents the largest known payout for workplace safety violations involving a single victim in California’s history. According to an agreement with Bumble Bee, the company will spend half the money on new ovens that will not require workers to step inside. The company will also pay USD 1.5 million (EUR 1.3 million) in restitution to Melena’s family, USD 750,000 (EUR 674,849) to the district attorney’s Environmental Enforcement Fund, and the rest will pay fines, court costs and other expenses.
Bumble Bee’s attorneys declined to speak to the paper.
