There is something about the plight of miners that touches me. It's hard to believe there are still people who do abnormally dangerous work in substantially similar circumstance as was done in the early 1900s. And it's also hard to believe that in that span of over one hundred years, there are not better, safer methods in place for the quick return of people trapped in the mines. The mine at issue here has apparently had more than 300 violations since 2004. As recently as last month, it was cited for inadequate escape passages.
In the law when someone engages in abnormally dangerous activity that harms the interests of others, we don't use negligence or recklessness as the tort theory. We use strict liability, meaning it's of no issue whatsoever how many precautions the wrongdoer tried to take.
I have no illusions that any of the miners are alive, and I feel terribly for their families. As I say, miner incidents just seem particularly tragic to me. But this incident leaves me with some questions:
1. How the hell many violations does a mining company get to have before it gets shut down? Why bother with a sanction mechanism if its enforcement is a joke?
2. If a company routinely blows off citations, and doesn't make a mine as safe as it can be under the circumstances, is it held to a strict liability standard, responsible for absolutely everything that flows from the actions of its business? And if not, why not?
3. Who's paying for all this? Who are the people lowering microphones and drilling and rethinking how to throw more light for the camera? Are they donating their time? Is Murray paying for all of it?
4. Would it have been so hard to get a couple of translators in place for the families of several of the miners, whose first language is not English?
Sources:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/july-dec07/miners_08-08.html
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I have a lot of nerve answering this, considering my total lack of law chops. But:
When my sister was doing the law school thing, she once mentioned that there is a special category of law applying to those activities which are clearly both inescapably dangerous and absolutely essential.
The law surrounding black lung disease was her case in point.
There is a compensation fund. Is the compensation provided equal to the pain and suffering of losing a loved one? Of course not. Could we continue to mine coal and avoid total energy dependency on the Middle East if the mines paid out what black lung is really worth, even in simple economic terms, to affected families? Nope.
So the standard is "sure, okay, this stuff is bad, but we all know we're stuck with it. So we'll do what we can."
Or that's how she explained it to me, anyway. A lot of tin cans and string between me and the original account.
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