A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a former FedEx employee, Michael Merton, that was killed “two weeks ago while working at the company’s facility at Lubbock Preston Smith Airport.” The lawsuit itself was filed by the former employee’s daughters, who still have no answers explaining what happened to lead to their father’s untimely death.
A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a former FedEx employee, Michael Merton, that was killed “two weeks ago while working at the company’s facility at Lubbock Preston Smith Airport.” The lawsuit itself was filed by the former employee’s daughters, who still have no answers explaining what happened to lead to their father’s untimely death.
The daughters are being represented by attorney Kevin Glasheen, who filed the lawsuit in Lubbock district court earlier this week on Tuesday. But what does the lawsuit allege? How is FedEx responsible for the poor man’s death? Well, according to the lawsuit, FedEx Freight Inc. is allegedly accused “of gross negligence by failing to train its employees in proper safety procedures and providing a safe work environment, which lead Merton’s Oct. 17 death.”
So what happened? How did Merton die? According to a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, “the accident came during maintenance on equipment.” He added that “investigators are looking into whether approved safety procedures were followed and if the mechanic was trained properly,” and said “the investigation is still open.” Additionally, on the day of the accident officers showed up at the airport, responding to calls about the accident. At the time it “was not being investigated as a homicide.”
The police weren’t the only ones who looked into the accidental death, though. It turns out that “investigators with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) are also looking into the death.” It seems in addition to Merton’s daughters and Glasheen, OSHA wants answers as to what transpired that fateful. In fact, one of the main reasons behind the lawsuit being filed in the first place was because there is such a lack of available information. Glasheen himself admitted that “the dearth of information on Merton’s death was one of the reasons for filing the lawsuit.”
When discussing the lawsuit, Glasheen said:
“We had to file this lawsuit in order to do the discovery that we need to find out exactly what happened and how it happened and why it happened. Generally, these kinds of actions are a lockout/tagout types of cases and so the particular facts of the case we’ll have to develop further in litigation because we don’t really have any way of forcing FedEx to give us information without using our subpoena powers in a lawsuit…We’d like to do our own investigations because, frankly, we put more resources into an investigation than they do…OSHA does a good job, I’m not knocking them, but they don’t have the resources that we do.”
In response to the accident, FedEx appeared saddened by the chain of events. In a statement Chris Allen, a spokesman for the company, said: “the company continues to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.” He added, “We remain deeply saddened by this tragic accident, and our thoughts and prayers are with the family.”
It will be interesting to see what new information if any, the lawsuit uncovers.
Sources:
FedEx employee’s family files wrongful death lawsuit against company
Family files wrongful death lawsuit in FedEx mechanic death at Lubbock airport
Join the conversation!