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Massey Coal Essay examples

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Massey Coal Case A person is morally responsible for an injury or a wrong if: 1. the person caused or helped caused it, or failed to prevent it when he or she could have and should have 2. the person did so knowing what he or she was doing 3. the person did so of his or her own free will

Question 1
Massey Energy Company should be held morally responsible for the deaths of the 29 miners. The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration issued “too much” citations for the violations in the mines Massey Energy Company owned. The company always challenged several of the citations and corrected enough of the significant and substantial violations to allow its total violations to fall below the level needed to force its …show more content…

The agency was understaffed and its inspectors were overworked. Also, the week before the mine explosion, half of the agency’s inspectors failed to attend required training courses and the agency neither kept track of their attendance nor did it sanction them. Not only that, but the company can’t shut down a mine unless the total violations of these coal mine companies are above the level needed to force its closure. Most of the coal mine companies challenged MSHA’s citations and corrected enough of the significant violations so they fall below the shut-down level. This is irresponsible on MSHA’s side. Thy should enforce a tighter and stricter rules when it comes to violations. MSHA should not just imposed fines on the company but they should be more stern when it comes to safety violations by the company. Also, waiting until there is too much violations by the company to close the mines will endanger the lives of the miners. When people lives are on stake, MSHA surely are not up to the standard of that task.

Question 4
The miners had some idea of the risks of working in the Upper Big Branch mine however that is not enough for them to be held any responsibility for their own deaths. Don Blankenship had released a memo to the managers specifically stating to ignore wasting time responding to requests to fix things. Managers then would be afraid to object to Don Blankenship requests since they could get fired. During

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