Bumble Bee Tuna paid millions this week to settle criminal charges for baking an employee to death in October of 2012.
The 62-year-old man was performing maintenance inside a 35-foot-long oven at a factory in Santa Fe Springs, when someone unwittingly loaded it up with over 12,000 pounds of tuna fish and turned it on.
The company faced stiff penalties for their employee’s wrongful death, because managers at the culprit plant had an established pattern of negligence that could have caused worker fatalities long before Jose Melena himself was cooked alive.
Less than a third of the $6-million “record” payout will actually go to the victim’s family, however, since part of the settlement terms forces Bumble Bee Tuna to upgrade the company’s Santa Fe Springs facility to a level of safety.
That includes equipping the food processing division with state-of-the-art commercial ovens that won’t require people to climb into them when cleaning or making repairs.
Private equity firm Lion Capital LLP, which owns Bumble Bee Foods, reportedly bargained down possible felonies to misdemeanors by agreeing to pay the multimillion-dollar penalty this month.
As well, the regional plant manager and safety director culpable in Jose Melena’s gruesome killing each pled guilty to felony charges in separate cases. They too received lesser sentences in exchange for hefty fines, probation and community service.
