As tornado anniversary nears, Mayfield candle factory owner faces another lawsuit
Families of three people killed in the Dec. 10, 2021, tornado outbreak that destroyed the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory have joined a new lawsuit against the company and a supervisor working the night of the deadly storm.
The suit, filed Thursday in Graves County, includes three previously unnamed former candle factory employees and the estates of three people killed in the twister: Ivan Ramirez Lopez, Jill Monroe and Kayla Marie Smith.
The allegations largely mirror those made by eight former employees in a class-action lawsuit pending in federal court. It accuses the company of requiring employees to continue working that night “even though it knew or should have known” about severe weather forecasts.
More:They survived the tornado that leveled the Mayfield candle factory. That was just the beginning
It also accuses supervisor Justin Bobbitt — the only other named defendant ― and other supervisors of threatening to fire workers if they left, and it claims the company tried to cover up those actions by defaming employees in statements made to the media after the storm.
The lawsuit goes on to accuse the company of refusing to pay medical bills and cutting ― through its insurer ― workers’ compensation benefits for employees as retaliation for their participation in a probe by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that, in June, fined MCP $40,000 for seven violations of rules guiding emergency action plans, exit routes and blood-borne pathogens (the company has contested all seven violations).
The result, according to the lawsuit, has been the “torment of an onslaught of collection activity against survivors by an Evansville, Indiana-based collection agency demanding thousands from numerous former workers who had participated in safety investigations after the factory collapsed on them.”
Claims in a lawsuit represent only one side of a case. Mayfield Consumer Products has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing following the twister that leveled the factory, killing nine people and injuring dozens more trapped under the rubble.
Related:'We are going to come back from this': New homes rise after devastating Kentucky tornadoes
CEO Troy Propes told The Courier Journal last month that company policy allowed employees to leave after signing out with their supervisors.
“In fact, several employees signed out after the first tornado warning,” Propes said at the time. “When a tornado warning starts, we have a shelter-in-place policy and implement it as required by federal law.”
In an email to The Courier Journal Thursday, Propes said MCP had not received the new complaint but would respond “as its legal counsel recommends and seems appropriate.”
“However, I noticed that Justin Bobbitt was named in the complaint,” he wrote. “Justin and all the supervisors were heroes that night and MCP will zealously defend them and Mr. Bobbitt.”
Jonathan Bullington is an investigative reporter. Reach him at: 502-582-4241; JBullington@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @jrbullington.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Second lawsuit filed in Kentucky tornado candle factory destruction
