[Fwd: Home Depot laughs off victims]

[Neil Schneider]

<http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480&lftnav=progressreport>
The Progress Report
by Christy Harvey, Judd Legum and Jonathan Baskin

ECONOMIC CONFERENCE
Laughing Off Victims

Knight-Ridder reports Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli and President
Bush took turns bashing trial lawyers to waves of audience laughter at
the White House economic summit yesterday. Nardelli said, "What you
have today is business on one side, and you've got the trial lawyers
on the other side. You've got deep pockets colliding with shallow
principles." But if you ask scores of ordinary American shoppers and
workers killed or maimed at Home Depot – or hurt by poisonous Home
Depot products - they might not think bashing people's legal rights
and refusing to protect innocent victims is so funny.

As the Atlanta Business Chronicle has reported, Home Depot reported
185 customer injuries a week in 1998 and has since refused media
inquiries into its safety record. The company also uses its vast legal
team to bully victims into signing confidentiality agreements about
their
injuries. The federal government "has recorded nine worker deaths in
the past four years at Home Depot stores" and, in 2002, recorded a "45
percent jump" in workplace safety violations.

In one high-profile accident, NASA astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien's
shoulder was crushed when a 68-pound drill press fell on him from more
than 10 feet up – ending his career.

Because Home Depot refuses to take adequate safety precautions, "They
are creating canyons of death and injury and inviting customers to
walk down them," said one attorney representing families of victims.
According to that attorney, the company has made a management decision
that it is cheaper to pay claims to injured customers than pay for the
necessary safety changes.

Read the full expose in the Atlanta Business Journal
<http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/related_articles/?story_id=808321&amp;jst=s_rs_lk">.

-- 
Neil Schneider                              pacneil_at_linuxgeek_dot_net
                                           http://www.paccomp.com
Key fingerprint = 67F0 E493 FCC0 0A8C 769B  8209 32D7 1DB1 8460 C47D

"All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies."
                 -- Dr. John Arbuthnot (1667-1735)