Warehouse Shoppers: Beware! Janessa Horner was a month shy of her fourth birthday that sunny Memorial Day Sunday, 2000, when she accompanied her parents and baby sister to church.  On the way home, they stopped to shop at the Home Depot in Twin Falls, Idaho.  The aisle they wanted was cordoned off, so they waited outside the security tape while an employee forklifted countertops down from a top shelf. Without warning, the load shifted and slid off the lift.  Janessa's mother remembers it vividly:  The lumber started hitting the floor and crashing into echoes.  Before I knew it, pieces of 6 to 12 foot lumber were flying through the air end over end.  Two or more of the pieces hit the back of Janessa and crushed her into the concrete floor.  I knelt down to pull the pieces off of her.  I grabbed her bruised little body and screamed "Janessa!" realizing she was unconscious. Splintered hundred-pound countertops had hit the back of the child's head, opening a main vein in her brain.  Within hours she was dead.

One of Too Many

A freak accident?  Tragically, what happened that Sunday in Idaho fits an all-too-common pattern in superstores and warehouse-style retail outlets nationwide. 

From Jan. 1, 1991, to June 22, 1995, according to Wal-Mart's Claims Management subsidiary, 25,426 of the chain's customers and employees were struck by merchandise.   These represent only incidents that resulted in the filing of a claim.  It is estimated that 150 Wal-Mart shoppers are injured each day by falling merchandise or merchandise dropped by employees.  A Home Depot official has testified that his chain received 185 injury claims a week in 1998. 

A sampling of accidents that literally had been on the shelf waiting to happen:

• San Diego, CA, 1992 - Another 3-year-old girl was crushed to death by a falling door at a Home Depot.
• Los Angeles, CA, 1999 - A 79-year old woman was killed at a Home Depot when a forklift operator accidentally knocked over lumber stacked above her. 
• Edmonds, WA, 1994 - A 46-year-old man was killed at a Home Base store when a 3,000-pound pallet of ceramic tiles fell on him.
• Abilene, TX, 1996 - A small child was killed when a wardrobe fell over at a Sam's Club.
• Virginia Beach, VA, 1997 - A 2-year-old girl died of injuries received when a 100-pound television set fell on her in a Wal-Mart.
• Miami, FL, 1997 - A 36-year-old Home Depot employee was killed by ceramic tiles that fell from a collapsing shelf.
• Danbury, CT, 2000 - Jeffrey Mead, 41, was killed at a Home Depot when a 2,000-pound pallet of landscaping timbers fell and pinned to the ground both him and his twin brother.  His brother was injured but rescued.
• Golden, CO, 1997 - Marlo Rice, 32, received permanent head injuries when a rack of bedding plants fell on her in Home Depot's garden department.  The retailer claimed the wind had knocked the rack over.  Rice said the rack was unstable because steel-framed tables had been leaned against it.  A jury awarded her $1.24 million.
• Colorado, 2000 - Dennis Fry, shopping in a Wal-Mart, was knocked unconscious by a wooden cabinet that fell off a shelf when he opened the door to look inside.  When he came to, “I remember wiping the blood off my face.
• Mount Laurel, NJ, 1997 - Boxes of vinyl siding fell at a Home Depot and struck 3-year-old Brandon Ryan on the head.  The chain agreed to pay his parents $500,000.
• Roseville, CA, December 2000 - Dan Ernest was struck on the head by a box of ceramic tiles accidentally knocked off a high shelf by a Home Depot employee removing something from the rack in the next aisle.
• Campbell, CA, 1996 - The spine of Donald Lasher, a 40- year-old optometrist, was fractured in three places when a shrink-wrapped stack of tool boxes fell on him.
• St. Petersburg, FL, 1999 - Milton Chambers, an appliance repair contractor, was struck by a range hood in a Home Depot when an employee he’d asked to help take it down dropped it.  Attempting to shield his head with his arms, Chambers ended up with injuries to his arms, neck and back.

When Merchandise Tumbles:  Worth the Price?

Wal-Mart's Risk Manager, Kevin Husted, testified in the mid-1990s that these in-store accidents had increased in cost from $275 million in 1992 to $410 million only two years later.  However, with annual operating profits of approximately $5 billion, the Fortune 500 company apparently calculates it's worth the price.  So do other super stores and warehouse-style retailers.

It's based on the economics of high-stacking the practice of stocking products in bulk on high shelves in areas frequented by shoppers.  Consolidating retail and warehouse space gives tremendous competitive advantages.  By slashing the cost of transporting merchandise from warehouse to shopping area (one firm has calculated that moving merchandise accounts for as much as half of its costs), and by making more efficient use of floor space, a warehouse retailer can offer goods at sharply reduced prices.  The result: high-stacking, while economically advantageous, exposes shoppers to grave risks they didn't face at the stores that the high-stackers are driving out of business.

Doing Business Without Rules

No state requires that restraints be used to keep high-stacked goods from falling off shelves.  No government agency tracks in-store injuries to shoppers.  Indeed, no legal mechanisms are in place that require warehouse stores to take any of the corrective actions that are needed, such as eliminating or significantly curtailing either high-stacking or the use of forklifts during store hours.  And retailers cannot be expected to act unless required to do so by law:  the actions would severely reduce their competitive edge.

It's a common and growing problem, says Jerry Hildreth, a former investigator for the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who has testified in falling-merchandise cases. At what point, as a public policy, do we stop permitting public corporations to kill people?

Three Ways To Protect Profits

• Insurance.  In traditional retail outlets, insurers often set the rules.  It was not uncommon to see hazardous-warning signs posted that prohibited public access to warehouse areas, usually attributing the ban to requirements imposed by the store's insurers.  Not so in modern warehouse-stores.  For one thing, the warehouse and shopping floor are now merged into a single space.  And for another, the warehouse stores are self-insured, for the most part.  Allowed to insure themselves, they set their own terms about what they will and will not reimburse.  One of the first casualties is coverage of medical costs:  many chains simply refuse to pay the medical expenses of their own shoppers that they injure and maim, arguing that their insurance doesn't cover those expenses.  The only thing this insures is that the corporation's bottom line remains healthy.
• Paltry Fines.  Warehouse stores must comply with OSHA regulations protecting the safety of their employees.  This should result in improved safety for shoppers as well, but OSHA regulation is relatively toothless.  One example:  In 1994 OSHA fined Home Depot for three violations in connection with an accident that killed a forklift operator. That fine was a paltry $1,875.
• Secrecy.  Home Depot and Wal-Mart have both fought to keep confidential information about injured-shopper cases.  Settlements almost always require the injured to agree not to disclose information.

Home Depot didn't succeed with Janessa Horner's parents, however.  They refused to agree to the settlement request because, as CBS reported, they believe shopping where merchandise is stacked unrestrained overhead is dangerous and that secrecy about the danger is part of the problem.

Attorneys for Donald Lasher, the California optometrist whose spine was fractured in three places, say Home Depot officials go even further, that they routinely destroy safety records that they are supposed to maintain and deliberately fail to keep accurate records of injuries... to prevent discovery (in court cases).  For example, they point out that in their case against the company, Home Depot refused to or was unable to produce safety alerts for 98 prior incidents, safety team minutes at the store where Lasher was injured, safety walk inspection files and risk management audits.

Remedies

Potentially effective regulations that have been suggested to reduce injuries, maimings and deaths in warehouse-store accidents include:

• Restricting forklift operations to night hours when the stores are closed or when fewer customers are on the floor. 
• Requiring that restraints, such as nylon straps, be used to secure overhead goods. 
• Requiring warehouse outlets to post their record of injuries and deaths on a warning sign at each entrance to the store. 
• Giving customers hardhats to wear upon entering the store. 
• Requiring that outlets be insured to cover medical costs of injuries received on their properties.  Failing that, one injury victim suggested, "Why not set up those computerized kiosks like they have in airports at each entrance."  For a few bucks you can take out extra insurance before you go in.

(08/14/01)