Backward Step for Worker Safety : Bill would weaken a good law .J.J. so why is Lungren backing it?

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren and the California District Attorneys Assn., which represents local prosecutors across the state, agree more often than they disagree about criminal policy matters. So the prosecutors’ open break with Lungren over a bill that would weaken the state’s 6-year-old corporate criminal liability law is significant and, in our view, persuasive.

The bill Lungren supports and the prosecutors oppose narrowly passed the Assembly late last month and is now pending before the Senate. It would appreciably weaken the legal standard that allows prosecutors to bring criminal charges against business managers and owners. The Corporate Criminal Liability Act, signed by Gov. George Deukmejian in 1989 with the support of business groups, provides for such criminal prosecution when a manager “should have known” a safety problem could lead to injury or death.

The most important thing to know about this law is that it has been invoked by prosecutors in only a handful of cases, less than 10 statewide in six years. But its availability, prosecutors believe, is a powerful deterrent to egregious corporate misconduct.

Prosecutions under this law have resulted from horrific and preventable worker deaths. In one case, a worker was ordered to climb into a silk screen machine while it was operating in order to repair it; he was crushed. The company had previously been cited for safety violations involving its machinery, including disabling or removing safety devices.

In another instance, a worker was killed when he was pulled into a salt-crushing machine by a conveyor belt. The company had refused, despite several requests from the company’s own worker safety committee, to install railing near this equipment that would have kept workers a safe distance from moving parts.

The pending modifications, introduced by Assemblyman Charles S. Poochigian (R-Fresno), would change the standard of proof from the “should have known” concept. Poochigian’s bill would require that managers have had “actual knowledge” of a workplace safety defect in cases of worker injury or death.

Assembly Republicans are pushing this bill along with a raft of others that would weaken civil liability standards and limit lawsuits. Lungren, whom many consider a likely GOP candidate for governor in 1998, recently announced his support for the measure. Admitting that prosecutorial abuses of this law had not occurred, Lungren said nevertheless he fears its “potential for future ‘horror stories’ ” and is concerned that it “may already have clouded California’s business climate.” How a law that applies only when such reckless actions have occurred can harm legitimate businesses is beyond us.

The association of district attorneys, in a strongly written response made public last week, rightly objects to Lungren’s suggestion that prosecutors might abuse their discretion. More important, they regard the proposed new legal standard--”actual knowledge’--as an impossible one to meet in court. As a result, they think Poochigian’s bill would be dangerous public policy. So do we.