Tucker’s Bill Seeks to Extend Liability for Workers’ Safety

Charging that local oil refineries duck responsibility for accidents that injure contract workers, Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr. introduced legislation last week to make it easier to prosecute the operators of a plant where such workers are injured.

Tucker (D-Inglewood) said his bill was prompted by the state’s difficulties in prosecuting Mobil Oil Corp. after a 1988 explosion at its Torrance refinery killed one contract worker and seriously injured two others.

Mobil, acquitted of criminal misdemeanor charges on Dec. 19, successfully argued it was not responsible because it did not directly employ the personnel, who worked for Cal Cat Chemical Co. of Benecia.

“These companies hire contract workers and then when something goes wrong they say, ‘Hey, that’s not our responsibility,’ ” Tucker said Friday. “If you’re going to come into our community and deal with dangerous chemicals, then you should be responsible for what takes place on your property.”

An attorney for Mobil, Thomas Mustin, declined to comment directly on Tucker’s bill because he had not seen it. But Mustin said he could imagine some situations in which such legislation “would be unwise and unfair.”

“Suppose I have an oil field, and a well catches fire and I hire Red Adair to come in and put it out,” he said. “It seems quite unfair that if something (bad) happens, that I should be prosecuted for it.”

Tucker’s bill, which has Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s support, would make a technical wording change to a state Labor Code provision dealing with criminal prosecution for worker safety violations. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office says judges have interpreted the provision in a way that makes it difficult to convict a company when safety lapses at its facility injure workers it does not directly employ.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Fred Macksoud said Tucker’s amendment would ensure that a company with “direction, management, custody or control” over a workplace would have to ensure that the workplace is safe for contract workers.

Macksoud, the prosecutor in the case over the 1988 Mobil explosion, said his office could have secured a conviction against Mobil if Tucker’s bill had been law at the time.

The explosion occurred when contract workers were using a volatile combination of chemicals to clean oil sludge from a tank. The tank blew up, killing a worker who was standing on top and injuring two others nearby.

Cal Cat Chemical and its president, Paul Taylor, pleaded no contest in July to criminal charges filed after the accident. They were fined $41,250 for failing to educate their workers about the proper use of chemicals.

Macksoud says the Tucker legislation also could also have helped him secure a conviction in a 1985 case in which a contract worker at the Champlin Oil Co. refinery in Wilmington--now the Ultramar refinery--suffered severe burns.

In a statement issued Friday, Reiner expressed strong support for Tucker’s bill: “Companies should not be able to contract out liability when they continue to control (a plant’s) operations.”

Tucker on Friday expressed optimism that his bill will garner support in Sacramento.

“I’m optimistic,” he said. “Call me foolish, but I think we’re now starting to raise the level of consciousness in Sacramento about what goes on in refineries and chemical plants.”