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Recognizing and Minimizing Tort Paper
Jorge A Cuellar
University of Phoenix
LAW/531 Business Law
November 08, 2010
Loi-Natalie Laing, Esq.

Recognizing and Minimizing Tort Paper Alumina Inc. is a company that makes aluminum automotive components and manufacturers all packaging materials like bauxite mining, alumina refining, and aluminum smelting. The company uses some chemicals that are necessary for the process and these chemicals contain and produce carcinogen effluents that can affect the environment and the people’s health in certain ways. The company is locating near to a lake and a small town, therefore the environmental regulations are very strictly in order to prevent any type of contamination that could affect the wildlife and the people surrounding the company. It is necessary to implement an operational system that will control and minimize the impact of the company’s waste toward the environment. The purpose of this paper is to recognize and minimize tort and regulatory risk plan for a company such as Alumina Inc. and explain how regulatory risks may be identified and managed through preventive, detective, and corrective measures. This plan has to be implemented according to the process and the technology employs within the company, in order to be efficiently and at the same time comply with the purpose of protecting the environment and meet the governmental regulations. Tort law imposes a duty on persons and businesses agents to prevent intentional and negligent injury to others in the society. Torts are unintentional negligence and strict liability. Tort law protects a person from unauthorized touching restrain or other type of contact. Also protects a person’s reputation and privacy, protects people’s rights and takes action for any violation of these rights (Cheeseman, 2010). Recognizing and minimizing Torts within the company are critical, not just for the company finance wellbeing but also for the community’s welfare, because any law-suit against the company can cost thousands of dollars to settle down and the loss of reputation and trust from the community toward the company. The first step to start a new regulatory risk plan is to analyze the water quality more often, take the results to the lab for them to be evaluated and take the necessary actions to correct any indication of contamination that affects the purity of the water. Another way to determine contamination can be any visual signs such as sick or dead animals, dry plants, or any other irregular behavior of the environment surrounding the company. Once these evaluations have been performed, an immediate remedial action should take place to prevent and control further environmental problems. Improving the machinery and technology to clean up the pollution produced by the company material and chemical processes. Implement a preventive maintenance check service to make sure that the operational machinery is properly working, calibrated, and without any leaking. The chemical supplies have to be properly stored and tagged along with the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) and be available for all employees who manipulate these chemicals. Managing the company’s chemical inventory and the training the employees on how to evaluate and avoid risks from hazards is critical to the industry. A minor accident by chemical exposure can have serious implications affecting the company’s productivity and cost money in terms of law-suit against the company (EH&S Compliance Made Simple, 2010). One of the main priorities of this plan is to help environmental health and people safety around the company, helping to create a safer work environment for employees could help to safe time, money, an reduce the risk and liability. To comply with the requirements of OSHA, EPA, DOT, WHMIS and any other safety regulatory organizations, the proper documentation and records have to be available all the time to be follow by the employees (EH&S Compliance Made Simple, 2010). This plan has to be preventive and corrective to meet the standards set by the organizations mentioned before. The secondary effects caused to people by the contamination of the lake can break the tort law because it is affecting the health of the individuals and people safety. Another important issue is the fact that if lake is an important economic resource to the town (food, water, electricity) and it is affected by company’s waste, this will bring devastating consequences by affecting the community well-being and at the same time generate a massive lawsuit from the community to the company.
The well-being of the community is a concern that has to be carefully attended, detect all possible liabilities and risk management measurements to limit the company liability. The creation of a contingency and supplementary plan is important to cover all possible risks that can incur in a tort law break. Safety is always a priority, and the company should never take any chance with the community health, safety, and well-fare. The plan has to be implemented in order to reduce as much as possible the risk of affecting the environment and the community. About five years ago, EPA found that the company did not meet the minimum pollution standards that brought a considerable cost of money to the company. The company had to learn the lesson in a hard way, however, the mistake that they did past can help to look forward for an effective solution and the proper implementation of a preventive and correcting plan.
As the company has the obligation to respect the people’s integrity, environment, and the wildlife surrounding the lake, it is important to assign the proper trained personnel to research and evaluate the results of lake contamination. Provide the necessary training for the new employees to be capable of managing the chemical products and avoid any future harm, maintain the machinery under good conditions, and adopt the necessary measures in the processes to minimize the production of material waste.
Once the company develops and implements this production plan that is in harmony with the environment and at the same time is efficient, the company will be able to save money and will have the necessary tools to defend itself in court in the case of the law-suit imposed by any individual from the community near to the lake. For example in bates’ case this new plan will assist the company management to proof that the company’s production did not affect bates’ daughter health because the production system is safe, clean and comply with the environmental regulations. The majority of the companies which use chemicals in their process have to create a plan that will help to reduce the production of waste material and clean the pollution to protect the environment and the community.

References
Cheeseman, Henry R. (2010), Business Law. Legal Environment, Online Commerce, Business Ethics, and International Issues (7th ed.). Pearson Education.
EH&S Compliance Made Simple. (2010). MSDS Online . Retrieved November 9th, 2010, from MSDS Online: http://www.msdsonline.com