JACKSON - A lawsuit against Lockheed Martin over a deadly workplace shooting that left six employees dead at the defense contractor's Meridian plant is a workers' compensation case, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The designation, under Mississippi law, would limit damage awards to about $150,000 for each victim. Under workers' compensation, payments are required by law to be made to an employee who is injured or disabled in connection with work.
At present, all states have some sort of workers' compensation. Private insurance companies offer employers' compensation insurance; some states have made such insurance compulsory, and a few have created state insurance funds to secure payments even when the employer is insolvent.
The shooting victims and their families earlier sued the company, claiming Lockheed's management knew employee Doug Williams' racist views had created a volatile work environment but did too little to defuse the situation.
The lawsuit sought unspecified damages.
Williams, who had worked for Lockheed for almost 20 years, left a mandatory diversity training class at the plant that makes airplane components on July 8, 2003, and returned with a 12 gauge shotgun and a semiautomatic rifle. Williams shot 14 people then killed himself.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigated the shooting and said Williams created a "racially charged atmosphere" at the plant and allegedly intimidated black workers for years.
Five of those killed were black while a majority of the injured were white.
Erica Tanks sued Lockheed after Williams shot and killed her father, Thomas Willis.
Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. has said its management had no way of knowing that Williams would go on a shooting spree, and asked the court to consider the case under workers' compensation guidelines.
U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee last September struck down the company's motion.
However, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this past week reversed Lee's decision, ruling that "the only viable conclusion is that, regardless of the ethnicity of the victims, Williams' act of shooting cannot be separated from the employment status of his victims."
"We would turn a blind eye to reality if we were to conclude that Williams willful acts were directed at most of these targets solely because they were black and not at all because they were longtime co-workers who were black (and white)," the ruling said.
The 5th Circuit said the facts of the case distinguished it from other damage lawsuits.
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