Massey Coal Case A person is morally responsible for an injury or a wrong if: 1. the person caused or helped caused it, or failed to prevent it when he or she could have and should have 2. the person did so knowing what he or she was doing 3. the person did so of his or her own free will

Question 1
Massey Energy Company should be held morally responsible for the deaths of the 29 miners. The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration issued “too much” citations for the violations in the mines Massey Energy Company owned. The company always challenged several of the citations and corrected enough of the significant and substantial violations to allow its total violations to fall below the level needed to force its
They are afraid management would look for ways to fire them. So afraid of being fired, miners should not be held responsible for their own deaths because of the lack of freedom they have to express their feelings.

Question 5
There is a huge difference between mines without unions like the Massey mines and other mines that had unions. The huge difference is the safety regulations. A union would fought for better enforcement of safety regulations to protect the miners. According to the testimony of Gary Quarles, the huge difference is when MSHA inspector comes to the mines. When an MSHA inspector comes onto a Massey mine property, the code words go out “we’ve got a man on the property.” When the word goes pit all effort is made to correct any deficiencies or direct the inspector’s attention away from any deficiencies. Also when an MSHA inspector comes to a Massey mine, he/she is only accompanied by Massey people. No coal miner at the mine can point out areas of concern to the MSHA inspector. While in union mines, workers at the mine would accompany the MSHA inspectors during the inspections. Workers also have the right to refuse to work in unsafe conditions without fear of their job. Clearly, in mines without unions like Massey, the people are trying to deceive MSHA inspectors to that they would not get citations for different violations. Seeing the huge