Shaw Industries Employees Deserve Better Accident Protection and Compensation

• August 9, 2024
• Attorney Matt Stoddard
• Warehouse Accidents

Shaw Industries is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway and, in its own words, a global flooring provider. It has its headquarters here in Georgia, along with dozens of carpet plants all over the city of Dalton and the surrounding area.

For the thousands of Georgia residents who work in Shaw Industries’ carpet plants, occupational injuries and illnesses are a very real daily threat, and getting adequate compensation can be a frustrating process, especially without expert help.

Carpet Plant Machines Present Some of the Worst Entanglement Hazards in the World

All factories need to be designed and run with meticulous attention to safety, to prevent catastrophic accidents. Every type of manufacturing involves potentially dangerous machines, as well as other hazards, such as heat, electricity, and caustic or toxic chemicals, which should be managed with appropriate care.

Carpetmaking in particular, however, relies heavily on the use of large, mechanized rollers. These types of machines are especially prone to trapping body parts, and the presence of long fibers as a building material further raises the risk of entanglement. Without strict precautions, carpet plants are deadly places.

In April of 2016, an employee was killed at Shaw’s Plant 15 in Cartersville, Georgia, during what the company described as routine maintenance. According to the OSHA report, the employee was replacing a dirty tension roller on an N1A Nip Assembly machine, when the machine started unexpectedly, dragging the employee in. Two coworkers saw the victim crushed and decapitated between the rollers.

A year and a half later, an employee was manually starting a carpet on a roll handler at Plant WE in Chatsworth. His hand and arm were dragged between the rollers and crushed.

Just two weeks after that, employees at Plant 23 in Dalton were attempting to re-thread a coater machine. This process apparently involved one person leaning over the edge of a catwalk and reaching through an unguarded area surrounding a moving part. He was killed when his head became caught between the part and a stationary ladder.

If any type of business should know the importance of locking out power to a machine before allowing employees to service potentially dangerous parts, it’s carpet manufacturers.

Like Most Industrial Facilities, Shaw Plants Carry a Risk of Fire and Explosions

No building is fireproof, but some have greater risk factors than others. Any factory that uses heat or low humidity for any part of its process needs to be especially careful. Shaw’s Plant LS in Dalton, for example, had an ignition in one of its industrial dryers in 2008, which quickly spread to the roof.

Thankfully, the plant was well enough prepared to evacuate the whole staff successfully. Still, even with perfect preparation, no fire evacuation is completely without risk. That’s why it’s important for plant managers to make sure heat-producing equipment is in good working order, to help prevent fires from happening in the first place.

Countless Shaw Employees May Have Been Exposed to Carcinogenic Substances

Right now, Shaw Industries is being sued for allegedly dumping perfluorinated chemicals, also popularly known as PFCs or “forever” chemicals, into the Congaree River in South Carolina. These lab-made compounds do not break down naturally, hence the nickname, and can be toxic even in small amounts. Buildup of PFCs in the human body has been linked with cancer, as well as reproductive harm, immune disorders, and damage to the liver and kidneys.

This is not the first time Shaw has been accused of poisoning its neighbors this way. In 2017, the Water Works of Cherokee County, Alabama also sued the owners of dozens of local factories, including Shaw Industries, for allegedly contaminating the county’s drinking water with PFCs.

Protecting clean drinking water is, of course, vitally important to the health of any community. At the same time, it’s important to note that whatever toxic compounds can be found in a factory’s runoff can also be found in its production process. For every non-employee exposed to harmful amounts of PFCs just by living near a carpet factory, the employees of that factory are likely being exposed to much higher concentrations.

Shaw Has Fought to Withhold Even Meager Worker’s Comp Benefits After Accidents

After a workplace accident, the standard process for covering the victim’s expenses is through a worker’s comp claim. Large employers like Shaw are required to maintain a worker’s comp insurance policy, or pay for their employees’ worker’s comp benefits directly as they come up.

Generally, worker’s comp benefits only cover medical expenses and two-thirds of the victim’s lost income. In return for funding these bare-bones benefits, employers are immune to civil lawsuits for accidents covered by worker’s comp. In cases where the employer caused the accident through negligence, that’s a very good deal for the employer and a terrible one for the employee, who would otherwise be entitled to full compensation for their losses, both financial and emotional.

Even so, Shaw Industries has repeatedly gone to court to avoid covering the medical expenses of its injured employees.

In 2012, a woman who had lost part of her foot to a carpet roller accident in 1996 had to stop working for Shaw due to worsening knee pain related to the accident. She filed for worker’s comp and was initially approved, but Shaw appealed the decision twice, arguing that her claim was outside of the statute of limitations. The Georgia Supreme Court ultimately sided with Shaw, ruling that her new symptoms were not covered by worker’s comp, in spite of being related to a workplace accident and arguably aggravated by her continued work for the company.

Another woman, also with a workplace knee injury, had better luck in Tennessee a year earlier. According to her report, she had tripped over a conveyor and twisted her knee in 2007. She suffered a meniscus tear, never fully recovered, and had to leave the company when Shaw would not accommodate her new physical limitations. Shaw disputed that the accident had even occurred, and referred the woman to a doctor who claimed that her persistent symptoms were largely caused by unrelated and preexisting arthritis. Two other doctors not related to Shaw argued otherwise. In that instance too, Shaw took the matter all the way to the state supreme court, but lost.

Many of the Threats to Shaw Workers Are Bigger than Shaw Itself

In a way, having a worker’s comp claim denied is sometimes a blessing in disguise for industrial accident survivors, because it can open the door for legal action that employer immunity would otherwise prevent.

Injured Shaw employees who receive their worker’s comp benefits without incident don’t have the option of suing Shaw. However, they can still sue any other companies that contributed to their injuries.

This is why it’s so important to recognize Shaw Industries for what it is: a single brand in an industry full of deep, fundamental safety failings.

Shaw Industries didn’t personally invent the deadly machines that the carpeting industry runs on. It didn’t hire the engineers who decided what safety mechanisms were “good enough.” It didn’t design the toxic stain-proofing and water-proofing products that it has used, and it’s hardly the most qualified entity to evaluate those products for safe use.

When an accident happens in a flooring plant, there’s almost always more than one responsible party. That’s how the Stoddard Firm is able to help so many accident survivors and their families collect better compensation than what the worker’s comp system can provide.

We’ll work with you to map out every mistake that led to your accident, not just the most recent or obvious ones. We’ll identify the best defendants for your case, whether that’s a machine manufacturer, a maintenance contractor, or a material supplier, and fight for a settlement that covers the full value of your losses.

To learn more, reach out for a free consultation by phone or chat.