News, Grain elevator company pleads guilty in teen death. (school, Colorado, Denver)

[JD59]

DENVER (Reuters) - A rural Colorado company pleaded guilty in federal court in Denver on Friday to violating workplace laws in the death of a 17-year-old boy who suffocated after he was sucked into a bin being filled with grain.
Tempel Grain Elevators LLP, under a plea agreement with prosecutors, must pay the family of Cody Rigsby $500,000 for his May 2009 death.

Grain elevator company pleads guilty in teen death - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/grain-elevator-company-pleads-guilty-teen-death-011344638.html - broken link)

[purehuman]

I don't understand what his age had to do with it....but I do agree they are liable because he had no safety line on....very unfortunate...it seems more and more safety precautions are out the window these days....could have something to do with the lack of unions, and the fact that they are becoming less and less, or the fact that young people are hired and not properly trained or warned about the possible dangers of the job...

[StealthRabbit]

I lost 2 teenage friends in a Colo Grain elevator explosion. I would have been working with them, but it happened on my first day on a new job.

[Three Wolves In Snow]

Originally Posted by purehuman

I don't understand what his age had to do with it....but I do agree they are liable because he had no safety line on....very unfortunate...it seems more and more safety precautions are out the window these days....could have something to do with the lack of unions, and the fact that they are becoming less and less, or the fact that young people are hired and not properly trained or warned about the possible dangers of the job...

I don't know about "these days", I think it's been ongoing. In high school, (a long time ago), for debate class the topic was grain elevators. I had to research grain elevators, which I knew nothing about at the time, the safety hazards associated with grain elevators, etc.

I didn't have the internet back then, either, which made it all the more fun to come up with references, stories and facts about grain elevators. But I won that debate and learned a whole lot about grain elevators...and how there are more dangers than I ever imagined.