Logansport Pharos-Tribune from Logansport, Indiana • Page 11

LOKAWiPORT, INDIANA. SL'XDAY, DECEMBER 13. PAGE 11 Silkwood Award Is Reversed OKLAHOMA CITY (UPI) A 2-1 ruling by a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel stripping the Karen Silkwood estate of a $10.5 million judgment against Kerr-McGee Corp. likely will be appealed to the full eight-member court, an attorney for the estate said Saturday.

The panel ruled in Denver Friday there was not enough evidence to support the contention the nuclear plant worker was intentionally laminated with plutonium before her 1974 death. "Most likely it (the appeal) will be to the full 10th Circuit Court of Appeals," attorney Arthur Angel said. He noted the ruling also contained aspects thai could merit an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. "There are several parts of the opinion that frankly don't seem entirely correct or entirely logical," Angel said.

"I'm pretty sure we're going to take il further. The question is in what form, in what wav." The appellate panel rejected a May 1979 federal court jury award in Oklahoma City of $500,000 in personal injuries and $10 million for punitive damages against Kerr- McGee Nuclear Corp. to Ms. Silkwood's children and estate. Kerr-McGee operates a plutonium processing plant in Crescent, where Ms.

Silkwood, 28, worked as a laboratory analyst. She died in a November 1974 automobile crash while on her way to discuss alleged plant safety violations with a union official. An autopsy revealed her body contained 25 percent to 50 percent 'of the permissable lifetime plutonium contamination allowed by the Atomic Energy Commission. The court left intact a $5,000 property damage award for furniture and clothing that had to be destroyed because of radioactive contamination in Ms. Silkwood's apartment.

The panel dismissed the punitive award, saying the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 pre-empts state remedies authorizing punitive damages. court said the personal injury claim should have been dealt with in Oklahoma's Worker's Compensation Court. "That ruling on the Atomic Energy Commission regulations totally pre-empting any right to have a jury award punitive damages may be something of sufficient national importance to warrant the Supreme Court looking at the case," Angel said Saturday. "I have a hard time understanding or accepting that this one particular industry has an insulation from liability where throughout the rest of society nobody else does," said Angel, one of four attorneys retained by the Ms. Silkwood's parents.

Bill and Merle Silkwood of Nederiand, Texas. Angef said the appeals court, in effect, found Kerr-McGee at fault when it left intact the $5.000 property damage award. He said the court was inconsistent in rejecting the other damage claims. Federal nuclear investigators and Kerr- McGee workers destroyed the property when they decontaminated the apartment. "For us to be entitled to recovery for property damage, there had to be some determination that Kerr-McGee was responsible for that damage," he said.

"Karen Silkwood did not do it to herself." Angel said he would contact the three other Silkwood lawyers chief trial attorney Gerald Spence of Jackson, Wyoming. Jim Ikard of Oklahoma City and Dan Sheehan of Washington to decide appeal strategy. Silkwood 100,000 Mine Deaths In This Century; Recent Disasters Still Shock Nation United Press International More than 100,000 miners have died in America's coal mines since 1900, usually alone or in groups of twos and threes, but big disasters shock the conscience in the nation's most dangerous industry. The 1969 federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act was approved after 78 men died in a fire-and-gas hell at Farmington, W.Va., when Consolidation Coal Co. 's No.

9 Mine blew up. In the past two weeks, mining tragedies in three states killed 24 men and again raised the question: Who is at fault 9 On Tuesday. 13 miners died in an apparent gas explosion at' Tennessee Consolidated Coal non-union mine at Palmer, Tenn. The day before, eight miners died in an ex- plosion at Adkins Coal Co. No.

18 Mine at Topmost, a mine under United Mine Workers contract. On Dec. 3, three miners were killed when the roof of their non-union mine at Bergoo, W.Va., caved in. The death toll for the year rose to 144. the same year-end level as 1979.

which was the highest in six years. Bu! deputy UMW Safety Director Danny Davidson said three Liquid Protein Manufacturer Must Pay In Death Of Dieter DETROIT (UPI) The owners of a suburban Detroit clinic and the manufacturers of a liquid protein have been ordered to pay $650,000 to family of a man who died while on the controversial liquid protein diet. Under a settlement approved Friday by County Circuit Judge Joseph B. Sullivan. 'the family of Patrick will receive a Jump sum and lifelong monthly payments as compensa- lion for his 1977 diet-linked death.

The agreement also provides for $107,000 in at- torney's foes tor Shirley Gaynor, Gaynor's widow, and their two daughters. Gaynor, 37, of Novi, and his wife paid the Weight Loss Medical Center in Livonia $270 each in February 1977 to be placed on the controversial liquid-protein diet. On March 3. Gaynor collapsed in his driveway- after complaining of pains in his arms. He was pronounced dead at Botsford General Hospital in Farmington Hills.

Gaynor's death was among 53 under investigation by the Federal Food and Drug Administration and Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. The investigations eventually linked several deaths and illnesses to the diet fad begun by the publication of Philadelphia osteopath Robert Linn's best-seller, "The Last Chance Diet." Studies showed the death rate for people on the diet was 30 times as high as the death rate among the general population. The Detroit Free Press reported 17 clinics closed in Michigan after the newspaper did an expose on deaths related to liquid protein diets. more miners were killed in separate single accidents Thursday in Indiana, Virginia and Kentucky. UMW President Sam Church Jr sent a telegram to coalfield governors after the Tennessee blast, urging them to step up mine safety programs for methane detection and roof fall inspections.

UMW officials-in West Virginia, where a third of the active UMW members are. told Gov. Jay Rockefeller they would not entertain any across-the- board cutbacks in the Mines Department budget to help make up federal budget cuts affecting the state this year. Two former UMW safety directors immediately attacked the Reagan administration, saying its proposals to drastically slash the budget of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration was at fault in the triple disasters. "We had foreseen this was going to happen," said Davidson.

32. a soft-spoken man who spent five years in the mines in Virginia, He said federal attempts to cut the MSHA budget by $32 million have resulted in a jittery mine inspection OPEN SUNDAY 12:00 to 5:00 P.M. Sentiments Cards Gifts Moore's Professional Portraits Young's TV and Appliance MINI-MALL 412 East Broadway BOILED HAM LOQANSPORT, IN force, with inspectors quitting in record numbers. A total of 123 have stepped down since the first of the year and have not been replaced. The number has declined from 1.770 to 1,647.

The industry often blames the coal miners themselves for negligence or slips which contribute to their own death. Old-time miners and widows know that cold, crisp weather late in the year often means explosions of odorless, colorless, silent methane gas. Miners like Walter N. Miller, now the director of West Virginia's Department of Mines, know the barometer declines in cold weather and forces gas from within the coal seams, making many mines powder kegs, Gas, loose root's, unstable shafts and a host of other problems make mines inherently dangerous. MSHA records show 12 inspections were conducted since the Bergoo, W.Va..

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