The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Company, managers charged in workplace death

United Oil manager accused of involuntary manslaughter, other execs face endangering charges in 2008 poisoning.

GE to hire 5,000 veterans, add 400 new manufacturing jobs
Updated 5 min. ago
Kasich wants 100 gigabits per second state network, smarter smartphones
Updated 12 min. ago
Benefit dinner held for girl who died in car accident
Updated 26 min. ago
‘App economy’ job prospects booming
7:38 a.m.
Groundwater monitoring well offers clues to the health of local industry
7:29 a.m.
> More headlines

By Lauren Pack, Staff Writer Updated 8:00 AM Thursday, June 17, 2010

HAMILTON — Indictments have been returned against United Oil Recovery Services Inc. and some of its higher-ranking employees in connection with the death of a worker in 2008 at the company’s Middletown facility.

United Oil and David J. Weber, 42, of Morrow, the company’s environmental health and safety manager, are charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, violation of wastewater permit, deviation from pre-treatment permit and criminal endangering.

United Oil President David C. Brown, 42, of Miamisburg, and plant manager Jay E. Black, 33, of Germantown, are each charged with criminal endangering, according to an indictment handed down by a Butler County grand jury.

The charges stem from a fatal workplace accident on June 21, 2008, at the Lefferson Road site, where wastewater was being improperly treated using sodium hydrosulfide, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.

As a result, a chemical reaction took place and lethal doses of hydrogen sulfide were released, killing employee Thomas Rogers, 45, of Colerain Twp. The Warren County Coroner’s Office ruled his cause of death was hydrogen sulfide poisoning.

Rogers’ family members did not return calls seeking comment Wednesday.

Warrants for the arrest of Weber, Brown and Black were issued Wednesday, according to the Butler County Clerk of Courts website. No court dates had been scheduled Wednesday afternoon.

Involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide are third-degree felonies that carry penalties of up to five years incarceration and a $10,000 fine for individuals and $15,000 for an organization.

Criminal endangering is a first-degree misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to 180 days incarceration and a $1,000 fine for an individual.

Cincinnati-based defense attorney Martin Pinales said in a message left Wednesday afternoon all defendants and the company will enter not guilty pleas because "because they are in fact not guilty."

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration investigated the incident and issued a citation last year, resulting in the company paying $7,000 in penalties, according to Richard Gilgrist, area director of the Cincinnati office.

“No willful violation of OSHA standards associated with the death was found,” Gilgrist said.

In 2007, United Oil was issued a permit from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for the pre-treatment of wastewater. The permit outlined the approved treatment processes. However, state prosecutors said the company deviated from the terms of its permit by allegedly using sodium hydrosulfide to speed up the treatment process.

The office of Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray is prosecuting the case at the request of the Butler County Prosecutor’s Office.

The environmental enforcement section of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office represents the interests of various state agencies in criminal, civil and administrative matters intended to enforce Ohio’s environmental laws and rules in order to protect the health and safety of the public and the state’s many natural resources.

Share this article