Workers at the Kentucky candle factory where eight people died in last week’s tornadoes have filed a class-action lawsuit over claims they were told they’d be fired if they fled to safety.
Production line worker Elijah Johnson, 20, and other staffers who weren’t named filed the lawsuit late Thursday against Mayfield Consumer Products.
The suit said that warning sirens went off more than three hours before last Friday’s twisters — but 110 workers were still in the factory when it was flattened because of the threats of termination if they left.
The company “knew or should have known that it was dangerously unsafe for its employees to remain working at its place of business during the approaching tornado,” the lawsuit said, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Mayfield Consumer Products has yet to comment on the legal action but previously called it “absolutely untrue” that its staff was blocked from leaving.
That repeated denial was in part a driving force in filing the lawsuit, Johnson told CNN.
“I’ve been making statements and every statement I’ve been making they denied it, and that’s just not right,” Johnson told the network, referring to previous interviews he has given.
“They’re neglecting everyone that’s in there,” he claimed of his employer.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, as well as legal fees. It also requests class-action status to allow other staffers to join the legal action.
It had to be filed electronically because Graves Circuit Court itself was so badly damaged by the deadly twisters that it remains “non-operational,” the Herald-Leader said.
While the company has yet to comment on the lawsuit, its spokesman, Bob Ferguson, had earlier acknowledged the likelihood of legal action.
“We live in a litigious society,” he said Wednesday, according to the local paper.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said on Tuesday that state workplace safety regulators would investigate the factory’s collapse.
On Friday, Beshear announced that the Kentucky death toll from the tornadoes had risen to 77, with at least one person still missing.
He called it “incredible news” given that he initially feared more than 100 deaths.
The National Weather Service recorded at least 41 tornadoes last weekend, including 16 in Tennessee and eight in Kentucky.
With Post wires
