Is your business a lawsuit waiting to happen?

You work hard to protect your company, managing the many risks while working under a tight budget. Yet, one day your worst nightmare happens. If fire or panic erupt in your building, will everyone be able to find the exits and get out in time? Or have supervisors or maintenance personnel compromised safety in their attempt to save money, increase production, or stop pilferage?

Liability is based on four laws when it comes to hardware on a building: State and local building codes, fire codes, life safety codes, and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) laws. If any of these are not correct in your building because some maintenance man is trying to “save” you money by not adhering to these laws, someone might get injured or killed and the finger is going to be pointed squarely at the managers and/or building owners.

The headlines that follow are shocking. People die; companies are sued and fined; owners go to jail. If there is a lesson to be learned, it is this:
Properly designed security systems can prevent future catastrophes!
Locks, alarms and other security measures can be designed to work in an emergency, yet not interfere with the daily business of your employees and customers. Our security professionals can provide systems that meet all fire and safety codes.

21 people trampled at exits.
Chicago Nightclub Stampede. (Chicago Tribune) -- Security video taken inside the E2 nightclub during the panic and stampede early Monday shows patrons rushing into a stairway, becoming wedged "like a cork in a bottle," then gasping for air and disappearing under a crush of bodies trying to escape the club. At the bottom of the stairs, a wall of tangled bodies blocked the stairway threshold.

96 people can’t escape fire.
West Warwick, Rhode Island Nightclub Fire. (CNN) -- The video showed piles of people lying on top of each other, trying to push their way out of the club. "There have been groups that were found that obviously were trampled," Governor Carcieri said. "There are others that were found that were obviously overcome with smoke. And others that the building collapsed on."

The Chicken Plant Fire (four news stories)
Toxic smoke, Locked Doors Led to Chaos, Then Death at Chicken Processing Plant. Hamlet, N.C. (A.P. Sept. 5, 1991) -- “It was the blackest smoke I had ever seen in my life,” said the 50 year-old grandmother, one of the few workers to escape serious injury when deadly smoke from a flash fire raced through the Imperial Foods Co. plant Tuesday morning.

Twenty-five people were killed, 49 were injured. The boundary of life and death was set by the billowing wall of toxic smoke. Those who worked in the front of the building were able to escape through a main entrance. Those in the back were trapped between the poisonous fumes and doors locked, employees say, to prevent pilferage. The smoke created panic, then chaos. (story continues...)

“DAVE...DAVE...GIT US OUT...GIT US OUT..." (From The Minnesota Review). Joe Ford pulled up in the company truck, jumped out and ran towards the locked door with a ring of keys. A hundred keys. Keys to his home, his car, his plant, his wife's car, his son's car, skeleton keys, company truck keys, his girlfriend's car, building keys, keys dating back to the Civil War. He and Dave fumbled with the keys and fumbled over each other. (story continues...)

Chicken Processor Fined For Door Violations. (A.P. Jan. 13, 1992) -- FINED. Imperial Food Products, Atlanta-based owner of a chicken-processing plant in Hamlet, N.C., where 25 workers died in a fire last September in Raleigh. The state of North Carolina levied $808,150 in penalties for violations including locked exit doors and inadequate emergency lighting. While a record for North Carolina, the fine was small compared with multimillion-dollar federal fines for industrial accidents. (story continues...)

Plant Owner Sent To Jail For 19 Years For Lock Violations. (A.P. Sept. 28, 1992) -- Last week Imperial Food Products owner Emmett Roe, 65, was sentenced to 19 years 11 months in jail as part of a plea bargain that let his son Brad, the plant's operations manager, get off scot-free.

Why hotels mostly have card access systems now. This took place in the late seventies at a hotel in Las Vegas that had been built in the fifties. It had hundreds of rooms. One day a woman returned to her room and was raped by someone waiting inside. She sued the hotel. When the lawyer was doing his research on the case, he discovered that the rooms had never been re-keyed since the place was built. The maintenance people were cutting an average of several hundred keys a month to replace keys not returned to the front desk at checkout. He figured that 72,000 keys were in circulation for the 500 rooms. Therefore, the hotel was liable for gross negligence of knowingly doing nothing about this potential problem. They settled for almost 3 million dollars at the time.

Renter bypasses lock, then sues owner. A woman had an apartment at ground level with windows that could be opened for air circulation. There had been a rash of women being raped in the neighborhood. The building owner promptly responded by having his maintenance crew install locking bars that would limit the amount a window could be open and thereby making it difficult if not impossible for someone from the outside to be able to open the window enough to allow someone to enter through it. One night, the woman decided that she could not get enough air through her window so she tampered with the window lock and disabled it. Sure enough, she was broken into several nights later and was raped. She sued the building owner on the grounds that he should have installed a window lock that she was unable to bypass. She won!

However, On A Positive Note…
As your company’s security director, you are in a position to not only prevent lawsuits, but also increase employee satisfaction and productivity.

A parking lot that is well lit and monitored by cameras is far safer for women or other workers who leave after dark. Exit doors that work smoothly, are well marked and are clear of obstacles ensure that rapid egress is possible in an emergency. Access controls, alarms, and surveillance cameras deter and eliminate the criminals while letting the honest employees and visitors go about their business with minimal worries about their own safety and security.

Be Prepared; Call The Experts. One call to us will get you started on avoiding potential lawsuits. We’ve got the experience to recommend security systems that are safe, comply with the laws, and will improve your business operations.