Attorneys representing the estate administrators and surviving families of the six people killed in the liquid nitrogen leak at the Foundation Food Group plant in Gainesville, Georgia, allege that Messer Gas destroyed a piece of evidence and provided false information.
The attorneys are seeking sanctions against Messer, which installed the liquid nitrogen system at the plant. A leak at the Gainesville plant on January 28 that caused the deaths of six people and illnesses experienced by other workers there.
Citing court documents, the Forsyth County News reported that weeks after the fatal leak occurred, it was discovered that the “bubbler tube,” which senses the level of liquid nitrogen to prevent overflows, was damaged and displaced from its original orientation.
The attorneys are alleging that specification drawings show that the bubbler tube should have two support brackets, but only one was installed. They further allege that the plaintiffs did not know until August 23 that Messer “found a second bubbler tube that was also damaged and partially displaced at another customer location in Stillmore, Georgia.
Court documents assert that the company had knowledge of the damaged bubbler tube at least in April, but that the company denied knowledge of it in its written discovery responses. “And despite producing approximately 27,000 pages of documents, Messer did not produce the photographs or text messages about the other bent bubbler tube.”
Messer in July was cited by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) related to the incident. It faces up to $74,118 in penalties related to six alleged violations. Also cited by OSHA were Foundation Food Group, Packers Sanitation Services and FS Group.
The people who were killed in the incident have been identified as Saulo Suarez-Bernal, Jose De-Jesus Elias-Cabrera, Corey Alan Murphy, Nelly Perez-Rafael, Victor Vellez and Edgar Vera-Garcia.
