Loading ...November, 2008
Manage the Liability Risks, Part 2 of 2
I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t serve alcohol at your holiday party. I’m no moralist. But I am a lawyer. And I have a fair sense of the liability risks you’ll be incurring if you do serve liquor at your party. Last week, I described those risks. Now I’ll suggest some of [...]
9 Ways to Curb Alcohol Liability Risks
If you’re planning to serve drinks at your holiday party, here are some of the steps you can take to prevent drunk driving accidents, recommended by alcohol liability consultant Shelly Timms:
Make guests pay for their drinks and don’t allow workers to buy drinks for clients
Limit the number of drinks each guest can consume
Offer a wide [...]
10 Facts About Drinking & Driving
Here are 10 interesting things that you ought to know about drinking and driving. If you like these, there are literally a couple hundred more statistics and tidbits like them available on the MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) website.
Alcohol-related fatalities are caused primarily by the consumption of beer (80%) followed by liquor/wine (20%)
There is considerable [...]
Real-Life Tales from Front Line Safety Directors
I’d like to share a story that happened almost 30 years ago when I was the site safety representative at a chemical plant in Texas. I had been living in Colorado with my family when I decided to move to accept the new position in Houston.
A Spine-Tingling Encounter
One day, soon after I had started [...]
Is Closing a Plant Better than Letting It Run Unsafely?
I just read Phil Wells’s story of two weeks ago on the plant closing due to cost of making it safer to operate. I work in a mill in western Canada. About 15 years ago, we had some people from Dupont come up and give us training on inspections for safety hazards. The climax of [...]
Death on the Highway
In the past 50 years, more Canadians have died on the nation’s roads than were killed in both world wars combined.
The source of this shocking fact is the Transportation Minister of the province of Prince Edward Island in a November 19 speech commemorating the country’s first ever National Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims.
Is [...]
How to Handle Small Grease Fires
According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), Thanksgiving is the number one day of the year for house fires. And the leading cause of those fires? Cooking. The best way to prevent a cooking fire is to stay by the stove and pay attention.
Here’s what to do in the event of a small grease [...]
The Liability Risks, Part 1 of 2
It’s become a SafetyXChange tradition. Every year at this time, we publish my analysis of an important but not well understood aspect of workplace safety: an employer’s potential liability for traffic incidents involving employees who’ve gotten drunk at the company office party.
The Risk of Liability for Serving Alcohol
Like many employers, you’ll be hosting a party [...]
Liability Risks
This story is equally relevant to Canadian audiences. Employer host liability for the drunk driving of employees is an outgrowth of the employer’s obligation to protect its employees. But it’s not contained in any of the provincial or territorial OHS statutes; nor is it in the regulations that implement those statutes.
The law comes from court [...]
Dr. Christian Barnard
Christian Barnard was the son of a poor Afrikaner preacher who grew up on the semi-arid Great Karroo plateau of South Africa. Walking five miles to his studies each day, Barnard graduated from Cape Town University and became a family physician on the Western Cape in 1951. In 1956, he received a postgraduate scholarship to [...]
