The Meridian tragedy raises some troubling questions not just for Lockheed, but for any company with a disturbed and angry employee in its ranks (there have been other such shootings, like the one at a millwork factory in Goshen, Ind., in 2001 that left two dead and six wounded). In Williams’s case, his supervisors at Lockheed ordered him to attend a two-week anger-management course after he threatened a co-worker in 2001 and, more recently, sent him home when he donned a bootee on his head that looked like a Ku Klux Klan hood. Could Lockheed have done more? Can the victims’ families hold the company liable?
Most legal experts agree that a lawsuit would face high hurdles. State workers’ comp laws hold employers mostly immune from suits stemming from a worker’s injury or death. An exception would be made if Lockheed, in its handling of Williams, was found to have intentionally endangered the victims. That argument succeeded in a 1999 North Carolina case in which warehouse owners failed to beef up security, despite warnings that a fired worker was likely to exact revenge killings. But Lockheed, says employment attorney D. Michael Reilly, “seemed to follow the book.” That leaves workers’ comp laws for victims’ families, providing a maximum of $149,000 in Mississippi.
Many companies bend over backward to counsel troublesome employees. But there are times when drastic measures are required. As employment lawyer Dave Wilson says, “Would I rather defend a case of wrongful termination [or wrongful death]? I’d rather be the company that fired the guy who was threatening people.” Though with Williams, that might have simply set him off sooner.
