OAN Staff Abril Elfi
12:12 PM – Wednesday, October 16, 2024
The family of Johnny Peterson, a Tennessee factory worker who died after facing severe flooding caused by Hurricane Helene, has filed a lawsuit against their relative’s employer and the company’s CEO.
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Peterson’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Impact Plastics factory in Erwin, Tennessee.
Peterson was one of 11 workers swept away by floodwaters on September 27th. Of the workers affected, five were rescued, four remain missing, and two, including Paterson, were confirmed dead.
In the lawsuit, his family claims that Paterson and his co-workers had been forced to stay in the factory, despite adamantly urging their superiors that they need to leave due to the worsening weather conditions.
The wrongful death suit names Impact Plastics and its CEO, Gerald O’Connor.
“Impact Plastics CEO Gerald O’Connor made Johnny and other employees come to work that day to meet production quotas. Orders had to go out. But as rain poured and the water rose, Johnny and his coworkers asked to leave. Instead of evacuating or allowing employees to leave, the company simply told employees to move their cars to higher ground. By then, it was already too late,” Peterson’s family said in the complaint filed Monday.
The lawsuit details continued, alleging that the company and O’Connor do not have an “emergency action plan” for employees, despite the factory being located on a “federally designated flood plain.”
“Impact Plastics, led by Mr. O’Connor, chose greed over the safety of its workers. The deaths caused by Hurricane Helene’s flooding were not just tragic — they were entirely preventable,” Peterson’s family alleged in the lawsuit.
On September 27th, the Tennessee state authorities also announced a separate investigation into allegations regarding how the company handled the incident.
On October 3rd, officials announced that the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration (TOSHA) and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation are working together to determine the cause of the workplace fatalities at the facility.
They also stated that Impact Plastics had failed to report the workplace deaths.
“Tennessee law allows an employer 8 hours to notify TOSHA of workplace fatalities,” the company said in a press release at the time. “TOSHA has not received a fatality report from managers at Impact Plastics.”
Impact Plastics issued a statement to the Associated Press (AP), claiming that on the day of the flooding, the company “continued to monitor weather conditions.” They also note that managers had begun dismissing staff when the waters started to cover the parking lot and the nearby service road, prompting the plant to lose power. Impact Plastics maintained that workers were given enough time to leave the factory, but the statement also expressed sympathy for the missing and deceased employees.
“While most employees left immediately, some remained on or near the premises for unknown reasons,” the company said in a statement to AP.
O’Connor released a later statement, reiterating that no employee had been threatened with termination if they decided to leave, and that they were simply dismissed to go home.
“We made sure the message was clear, even for non-English-speaking staff, by using bilingual managers to communicate,” he said.
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