For the first time in more than 30 years, a California jury has convicted a business owner and manager of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death of a worker on a job site.
The website ConstructionDive reports the owner and the project manager for a construction company were charged in connection with the “preventable death” of a day laborer in 2012 when a concrete retaining wall collapsed on top of him.
Richard Liu, the owner of U.S. Sino Invesetment in Fremont, and Dan Luo, the project manager, were sentenced by a superior court judge in the death of Raul Zapata, 36. Zapata died three days after a building inspector had issued a stop-work order at the job because of a lack of shoring on the 12-foot deep excavation.
The last time a business owner or manager was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for a workplace death was in 1982, after two Burbank water reclamation workers died after inhaling fumes, ConstructionDive said.
Their report said the prison sentence for Liu and Luo could be a message to contractors in the state who cut corners and imperil workers or bytstanders. Prosecutors in Alameda County, for example, were reportedly considering charges for a builder or property owner in connection with the collapse of an apartment house balcony in Berkeley that killed six students in June.
According to California’s Department of Industrial Relations, Zapata was installing a concrete foundation for a retaining wall at a residential construction site in Milpitas when the excavated area collapsed, killing him instantly. Investigators determined that neither the victim nor any other employee was wearing any head protection, and that the employer didn’t have anyone on the site who was competent to supervise an excavation. The employer didn’t carry any workers’ comp insurance.
The civil investigation resulted in fines of more than $168,000.
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Two executives of a California construction company have been sentenced to two years in prison in connection with the death of a day laborer.
